ROLE OF INDEXING AGENCIES: AN EXTENSION OF NEO-LIBERALISM AND NEO-COLONIALISM

LAW

The recent obsession of academia with SCOPUS and WOS indexed journals as proof of quality of the articles published by scholars is extremely problematic. The analysis of the work of a researcher has become more mechanical with respect to the bibliometric method used by these indexing agencies. The emphasis has shifted from quality to quantity which the exact opposite of what was intended. The fetish of the indexing agencies is forcing the universities and institutions based in the third world to pay hefty amounts of money to buy their subscriptions. The effect of this fascination is that these companies are making a lot of profits without the consequential increase in the ‘quality’ of academic articles. The researchers in this article would argue that this phenomenon is just another construct of neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism with which the third world countries are grappling. The underlying belief of ‘what is western is good’ is being reemphasized due to the fixation with SCOPUS and WOS. In fact, even the UGC has come up with a UGC CARE list wherein, journals indexed in SCOPUS and WOS are considered to be a part of its Group A list.

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