Pinned post for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc

This is a pinned post for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc. Please, please read this site and the old posts, here, here, here, here,  here, here, here, here . There are over 5000 comments and replies to these comments in these posts. 

Citations and Ranking

An article "Using citations to Rank.." is an interesting read.

This article wonders how Veltech, a private university in Chennai, is ranked #1 in Asia on the basis of citations. The authors of that article should read this article.

Further, everyone keeps on changing the methodology. For example, the counting of "kilo-paper issue, papers mainly in particle physics with hundreds or thousands of authors and hundreds or thousands of citations." Read about it here.

Seventh pay commission

Happy Republic Day.

A committee has been formed to implement seventh pay commission in autonomous institutions such as IIT/IISc/NIT. You can enter your thoughts and comments in this thread. This is the current table for regular central government employees.

Pinned post for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc

This is a pinned post for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc. Please, please read this site and the old posts, here, here, here, here,  here and here, here also. There are over 5000 comments and replies to these comments in these posts. 

Cited researchers

A few weeks back, Shanghai released the list of cited researchers. It called its list as "Most cited researchers" Around 20 Indians, including one from IISc, find a place in that list. An important factor that plays a role in Shanghai Rankings is the MCR (Most Cited Researcher) list that accounts for 10% of the ARWU subject rankings. MCR is based on the top 150 researchers across the world in that field of engineering.

Thomson Reuters has also released its list of highly cited researchers. This list is called as "Highly cited researchers" Roughly 1500 from USA, 87 from China and 2 Indians find a place in this list.

ACS Omega

The American Chemical Society (ACS) introduces a new open access journal, ACS Omega. ACS has another purely open access journal called Central Science but they are very selective and will publish only 200 papers a year, unlike PLOS One that publishes ~200 papers in 2 days.

In the press release, it is stated, "ACS Omega will publish articles on the basis of rigorous technical review rather than subjective editorial or reviewer opinions of the work’s significance or impact. .....are introducing an agile and seamless manuscript transfer system that will enable authors submitting to one ACS journal to be easily referred for review and publication in another suitable ACS journal, should their paper not be accepted by their first-choice forum. "

Thus, if your manuscript is rejected by any of the other 50 journals of ACS due to poor novelty or impact, you will be asked to transfer it to ACS Omega. You can pay and publish (assuming, of course, that your manuscript is scientifically sound). Read about the discussion here.

This is similar to other journals (megajournals) such as Scientific Reports by the Nature publishing group, AIP Advances, IEEE Access, Springerplus, Heliyon of Elsevier and the forerunner to all of them, PLOS One.

I am sure that many authors from India will pay from the CPDA grants for these open-access journals. After all, they are published by Nature and ACS. 

This is not to be confused with RSC advances, which requires significant advance and impact. RSC advances started as a transfer journal for RSC but immediately rose up the ranks. In 2015, it received more than 50000 submissions and accepted around 25000 papers and published 100000 pages. The reason for the large number of submissions to RSC advances is because it is NOT open access.

Tenure

I have been asked frequently about the introduction of the tenure system in IISc. There are no official notices in this regard and I guess it may have been discussed with the chairmen of the departments. Therefore, what I say below is based on what I know and what I have been told by others.

Currently all faculty who have joined before August 1, 2015 were given a five year contract. At the end of 4.5 years, they were asked to submit their papers in the format given in the following link. If the performance was not satisfactory, they were given a two year extension. Then they were asked to submit the performance form again and given tenure or extended for a further two years. This continued till the tenure was granted at some point. No one was asked to leave.

All faculty joining after August 1, 2015 will be given a five year contract. At the end of 4.5 years, they will be asked to submit their papers in the format given in the following link. I guess some feedback will be given to the faculty at this stage. At the end of 5 years, all the faculty will be given a terminal 3 year contract.

At the end of 5.5 years (extendable to 6.5 years ??), the faculty will be asked to submit their papers again. The faculty will suggest 8 referees (4 Indian and 4 foreign) and the department will suggest 8 referees (4 Indian and 4 foreign) and this list is sent to the divisional chairman, who will pick up 8 names from this and send your details to these referees. Once the comments are received, these will be discussed by a promotion and assessment committee. This committee consists of all six divisional chairmen, the associate director, director and 8-12 very eminent scientists from India, who do not belong to IISc. The case will be considered by this committee. Either they will be promoted to Associate professor with tenure or the contract will be allowed to expire and the faculty has to leave by the end of 8 years.

This seems to be the procedure. I have been asked frequently is what will be the criteria for tenure. I guess it will be depend on the criteria (research, teaching, consultancy/service) given in the form. Some of the new faculty who have been offered have been explicit in asking the following 

"Professors in the west have to continuously get research funds in order to just maintain a lab (sometimes even paying rent and electricity bills) and pay the students. Many are forced to work fast and publish fast....
India is faring much better in this regard...Tenure isn't a problem as the job is made permanent after a year. Student evaluations of courses do happen but they're mostly for professors to improve their teaching. They're not a criteria for promotion or salary increment..."

Thus the question boils to this "If other institutions do not insist on publishing research or teaching well and give tenure to all faculty at the end of the first year, why should IISc have a tenure system?" Basically, I do not know but I believe that the tenure will be based on minimal criteria !

Asking me on whether one should choose IISc or IITs that do not have the explicit tenure criteria will not fetch any answers. In case you are not aware, the conduct rules state "No employee shall make any statement of fact or opinion which has the effect of an adverse criticism of any current or recent policy or action of the Institute or which is capable of embarrassing the relations between the Institute and (... government)".

Thank you

As the number of cases of dengue increases in IISc, I was admitted to hospital last week for a couple of days due to dengue. The doctor recognized that dehydration was the key and the platelet count is not as important and put me on saline/dextrose.

I would like to place on record the outstanding response of my students and some of my colleagues. My students were always with me during the entire stay in the hospital and helped me with food, clothing and care. My colleagues also helped me move around, picked me up, dropped me off and were available for any help.

In my interview last year, I had mentioned that I am very proud of my students and how they motivate me. This incident only confirms the same.

A big thanks to the OVERWHELMING wishes from each and everyone of you! Blessed to have such amazing students and friends.

Rankings

Shanghai rankings..

No need for words..comparison of IISc with two Chinese universities. All these universities had similar ranks in 2003 but the rankings have changed due to judicious implementation of certain policies.

http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-University-Rankings/Tsinghua-University.html

http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-University-Rankings/Zhejiang-University.html

http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-University-Rankings/Indian-Institute-of-Science.html

Admissions 2015

Every year, I used to post on the status of admissions to our B.Sc (Research), M.E and research programs. Due to this, I am getting several emails this year also. I am not in the UG/PG admissions committees effective Jan 2015. This is a personal decision so that I could concentrate on certain research problems that require undivided attention. On an aside (as I am frequently asked this question), I am also not on the committee that will advise the director so that IISc will become a top 50 university within the next five years. I am, therefore, sorry that I am unable to respond to the emails or provide updates on admissions or my opinion on rankings.

Publishing

There is an extremely well written article on publishing/publishers/high cost of journals etc. that has appeared in the latest issue of Current Science. The article seems to focus on mathematics journals but the principles there are applicable to all fields.

Unfortunately, another book which promises much from the title, "Do We Still Need Peer Review?" fails in the quality of the content. Read the review of the book.

Thanks

..to the readers and commentators on this blog. This blog has crossed one million visits in 5 years. Thank you all.

Choosing a research advisor

Read this article.

How can you avoid a picking a bad adviser if you’re not sure what you’re looking for in the first place?

One way is to study what goes into the decision. Be an informed consumer: Know what you want, and expect what you’re entitled to.

From the comments

Spotting (and avoiding) a bad adviser is actually much easier than finding a good one. Common issues to watch for:

(1) Ask: find former students or colleagues and [delicately] ask whether (s)he is an effective adviser who supports students. 

(2) Speak: is (s)he someone with whom you can truly speak... candidly? You will need that later on, so avoid those aloof, cagey, dismissive, and distant personality types (and yes I realize that probably rules out half of academia);

(3) Publications: does (s)he publish results regularly? If not, avoid. Remember you're there to do work and get published. 

Congratulations

to Prof. Ashutosh Sharma, who has been confirmed as the DST secretary. He is an outstanding scientist and someone I look up to for research.

He also writes wonderful poems and he presented me a great book called Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

I think he will miss doing research in IIT, Kanpur but I feel his contribution to science will increase by taking over this position.

Impact factor

Another new impact factor by Scopus.

IPP: The IPP measures the ratio of citations in a year (Y) to scholarly papers published in the three previous years (Y-1, Y-2, Y-3) divided by the number of scholarly papers published in those same years (Y-1, Y-2, Y-3). 

SNIP: Source Normalized Impact per Paper measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field.

SJR: SCImago Journal Rank is a prestige metric based on the idea that not all citations are the same.


Of course, you have the famous journal impact factor (JIF) by Thomson Reuters as published by Journal Citation Reports (JCR). This is based on 2 and 5 year windows. Thus, now we have impact factors on 2, 3 and 5 year windows but based on different databases.

The Eigenfactor is another PageRank-type measure of journal influence.

Scientists normally choose a journal based on factors such as longevity, publisher and reputation in the community rather than impact factor. However, in my experience, in the Indian scientific community, impact factor is given a lot of importance rather than how many times the paper is eventually read/cited. It should be remembered that less than 5% of the total papers that are published are cited more than 10 times (the i-10 index) and only 20% of the papers published in the journal contribute to 80% of the impact factor (Pareto principle).

Rankings

You can listen to Prof. Balaram talk about rankings..the video is nearly for 2 h (including the question-answer section). Below is the youtube link

Ranking Indian Institutions : Choosing Courses for Horses 

Prof. Balaram, as usual, is clear and critical. He says that these lectures should not be held in INSA because no practicing scientists attend these talks in INSA. He points out clearly the problems with the administration of the universities.

Prof. Balaram is really one of the very few people to understand rankings. As he clearly says in the talk, we can not move up the rankings unless we understand these rankings. People think it is very easy to understand rankings by just looking at the final numbers. It is important to understand the methodology and the fine print. 

For example, in the BRICS rankings released this week, IISc is ranked 25 but fares poorer in citation scores than IIT Roorkee. Why? The number of citations, number of citations per faculty, number of citations per paper etc. are all higher for IISc compared to IIT-R but then why does it score lesser? Well, I am not giving the answer here but that is something administrators who indiscriminately talk about rankings should understand. They should spend time reading the methodology used and understand all the fine print or at least contact people who understand this.

Comments on the blog

Ankur Kulkarni says

I think the reason is not lack of talent. I think the reason is that the Kafkaesque bureaucracy, untrusting or even hostile attitude of administrators (who are also other faculty, often from a deprived generation) and lack of systemic incentives and individual recognition for excellence, humiliates, depresses and eventually ruins the zest for research of all but a few thick-skinned faculty. 

You can see evidence of this on the ground. IITs have been hiring people with great potential since about 2008 (since the 6th pay commission - roughly a year before this FAQ post started). Now would be a good time to take stock. How many of them have achieved their potential? And how many have degenerated into pade-shadows of their earlier selves, still talented but drained and defeated? I think a sadly large number are in the latter category.

Senior IISc Prof says

The anon posters above..please do not forget that things that Prof. Giri has said before here and Prof. Balaram put it eloquently "IIX has benign neglect for people who perform."

IIX is a government job. Nobody cares a damn whether you work or not work. They may be some minimum requirements for promotion like 5 papers in 5 years, 1 ph.d student etc. So, people work towards working for these requirements. Beyond that, do not expect to be appreciated if you publish 50 papers in 5 years. You will be treated the same. 

Same number of students, same number of space, same money, same salary for everyone. We practice socialism but expect capitalism in output. 

So, you might wonder why people talk about increasing research output and rankings etc. Then, please read this.

http://dsanghi.blogspot.in/2011_02_01_archive.html

"One of my colleague once said that we talk about PhD program because it is in fashion to talk about research, and we need to justify not doing research. But we really don't want to admit more PhD students because we are afraid we will have to work harder. "

Take examples everywhere. Hard working professors in IIX work hard because they are self motivated. They will not get 1 rupee more either in research or personal money. They will not be given even one research student extra that prescribed maximum in the institute. No one (Expect their friends) will appreciate what they are doing.

This is reality. IF you do not know what is the reality of a government job, do not join. And repeat after me: IIX is a government job.

Senior prof in IISc.

Another commentator from IIT says

Why 50 papers in 5 years? There are even some faculty who publish 50 good papers in 1 year, patent, teach and also bring projects. They are also treated the same..not even more space or students or research/ equipment money from the institutions..forget personal money.

IIX runs primarily on motivated faculty and staff who work irrespective of rewards and without expectations. The admin knows that they work because of self motivation and nothing needs to be done.

Thanks to the commentators..glad to keep the blog unmoderated and allow anonymous comments. I do not think many would write if it is otherwise.

Peer review scam

When a handful of authors were caught reviewing their own papers, it exposed weaknesses in modern publishing systems. Read about it in Nature.

I am slightly surprised because editors will not normally contact people with non-academic addresses for reviews, especially if they are suggested by the author. I am an editor for 5 journals and I will either send it to people I know (or interacted with email) or send it to reviewers who have official addresses (basically people who you can look up quickly in google).The peer-review system certainly is imperfect but I think it is still better than self-publishing.

Anand Carlsen

Anand takes on Carlsen for the world championship starting today. Best of luck to Anand !

Games start at 5:30 pm IST. Watch it live !

A preview here.  I wish to see a lot 1.d4 games in the upcoming matches. No more boring Berlins !

Update @9 Nov, 9 pm: A blunder by Anand 34..h5 closes the game. Qd2 may have drawn the game. Guess he completely missed Qb7.

Update @11 Nov, 9:30 pm. Anand proved superior by playing a very theoretical game of the Queen Gambit Declined. The first 20 moves were exactly the same from the Aronian - Adams from Bilbao Grand Slam Final 2013. Aronian played Qe2 and drew. Anand played fxe4 instantly and had the advantage. But the advantage was not much till Carlsen did a mistake with 28...Ba5, which basically lost a bishop. Somehow, I had a feeling that even if Carlsen had not blundered, Anand would have won because he was precise and controlled the c file. I hope Anand plays like this and win.
Was distracted today because Anand missed Qb7 in the previous game

Update @15 Nov, 9 pm. After 26. Kd2?, Anand blundered by not choosing 26... Nxe5 27. Rxg8 Nxc4+ 28. Kd3 Nb2+ 29. Ke2 Rxg8 30. Rxh6. All the moves are forced after Nxe5. Read all about it here. Anand should and hope will prove me wrong but it will be very difficult for him to come back. 

Interview with Prof. CNR Rao

The interview in Kannada and its translation in English.