Amended criteria for promotion of medical teachers: A step towards sound research and publication.

Dear Editor:

The research publication is an essential criterion for the promotion of a medical teacher. Besides, publication in journals indexed in the reputed bibliographic database is a prestige.[1] Board of Governors in the supersession of the Medical Council of India have amended the guidelines for the promotion of medical teachers.[2] Publication-related major changes are:

The number of required publications has been reduced – one paper to become an associate professor and three (two should be published as an associate professor) papers to become a professor

Along with the original paper, systemic review, meta-analysis, and case series are accepted

The first three authors and the corresponding author will get credit

The principal or coprincipal investigator can show their funded research project (funded by the Indian Council for Medical Research or Department of Science and Technology or Department of Technology) instead of a research publication

Index Copernicus has been excluded. Accepted bibliographic databases are Medline, PubMed Central, Citation Index, Sciences Citation Index Expanded, Embase, Scopus, Directory of Open Access Journals (”Citation index” is not a bibliographic database. This may be either “Emerging Source Citation Index” or all indices under Web of Science Core Collection [https://mjl.clarivate.com/home]).

We hope the current research-centric amendments would create a healthy research environment in the Indian medical institutions. Teachers now have the flexibility to show either their project or research publication for the promotion. Acceptance of the first three authors and the corresponding author would encourage collaborative research work. A single published paper can promote four teachers from assistant to associate professor. Previously, these four teachers would require at least four papers. Perhaps this created a huge research papers (read “promotion paper,” a paper especially written and published for promotion) output from India.[3] Besides, most of them were published in Index Copernicus-indexed, poorly-maintained, peer review-bypassed journals. Publication in those journals was very easy and convenient for novice authors.[4] Thus, we hope that the new guidelines would limit the dubious publication output from Indian medical teachers.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.