From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2019 15:02:49 +0000

Dear CW:



The other day I received yet another in an endless stream of invitations to
contribute a paper to a dodgy-looking journal. But this one included a
particularly interesting claim: that it’s a “UGC Approved Journal.”



As many listmembers will already know, the UGC is India’s University Grants
Commission, and in 2017 it created a list of approved journals as a tool to
help academic authors avoid deceptive publishers. Given that the invitation
I received was from a deeply suspicious-looking journal (Exhibit 1: it’s in
a field for which I have no qualifications whatsoever; Exhibit 2: it
promises acceptance within “1-2 days after submission” and publication
“within 1-2 days after registration”), I was interested to see whether it
really is on the UGC list.



But to my surprise, when I tried to access the UGC list (
https://www.ugc.ac.in/journallist/), access is denied. Seeing the list
apparently requires some kind of specific credential. In fact, this seems
to be the case for UGC’s entire webspace.



So my question for the CW is this: does anyone know what kind of credential
it takes to access the UGC webspace? (Do you have to be an academic at an
Indian university?) And is it really impossible for anyone without that
credential to double-check a journal’s claim of UGC approval?



Thanks in advance!

Rick Anderson



---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

Desk: (801) 587-9989

Cell: (801) 721-1687

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