Showcase science event a dud
Subhra Priyadarshini
Friday, 18 January 2008 11:44 UTC
A lot is being said about the annual Indian Science Congress event that concluded earlier this month in Vishakhapatnam. Colleagues coming back from the event reported being overwhelmed with a barrage of old scientific papers, poor attendance in plenary sessions and a dismal representation of top-notch scientists and labs at the meet. Looks like the Indian Science Congress Association has to put its act together to make the event worthwhile. It has even been called a sheer waste of public money. I wonder what changes in the existing format could help draw young scientists and reputed labs into the event. Any suggestions?
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Replies
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Respected Ma’am,
In my opinion, Indian Science Congress Association has many stringent conditions for submitting as well as accepting papers for presentation especially in case of young scientists. Though such stringency may be required for a fair process towards a reputed Indian Scientific Event yet the condition that may be most problematic is the basic criteria for submitting a paper itself. ISCA demands that each author and co-author of a particular paper that is being submitted for consideration in the Congress must be a member of ISCA. This does create a lot of problems in various situations, where a young scientist may have to pursue his colleagues and other co-authors to become ISCA members. All in all this process may end up taking a lot of time and preventing the researchers from submitting paper especially those researchers who are still novice in this field. I suppose this point must be considered by ISCA. Secondly, Proceedings published by ISCA aren’t at par with other reputed proceedings published elsewhere. They aren’t published convincingly online neither are they having a creditable impact factor. ISCA needs to publish its proceedings in a more journal-like manner so as to attract researchers who would be interested in presenting as well as publishing their research.
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Thanks, Abhishek.
Though I don’t see anything wrong in ISCA wanting everyone to enroll as members, it looks like they do not advertise the fact very well among young scientists. Or else a researcher joining a lab could get to know of this from an internal information resource like a bulletin board or library, a notice board posting or even an active existing member. And he or she would have sufficient time to consider this before he thinks of submitting a paper to the Science Congress.
On publishing proceedings, however, I have seen some change over the past few years. Visually they look better but yes, I agree, they still have to go a long way to achieve the finesse of a scientific compilation. -
Dear Subhra
I also feel that the point which Abhishek has raised (about publishing proceedings in reputed journals) is valid, if one is looking forward to attract good scientific community from reputed national labs. Though it is true that one should present high quality scientific findings in conferences, however it is also a fact that each scientist wants to publish his/her stuff in best quality journals. This makes it even more difficult for somebody doing good science to publish his/her best scientific stuff in these conferences (since one can’t publish same stuff again in reputed journals). I have not attendend Indian Science Congress for years, but I remember my PhD days in India, when we used to agree to go to conferences, only and only if Conference committee agreed only to publish our abstract (and not the full paper), so that we dont end up loosing our data for a quality “high-impact journal” publications… This sounds very selfish, but that’s the way it is… One should no more consider Science just as a means of charity, it is also a profession…. Scientists are also human beings, who need to think about their own intersts and professional development !!! What probably required in India is – “Hard work from conference organizing committee, so that they improve their reputation and could attract better Science !!!” That’s the way, it works, throughout the globe….
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Yes, Vipul. I realise the need for young researchers to save their work for high impact journals. After all, as you say, science is not charity. At the same time, the Science Congress does not seem like a place where a breakthrough would be discussed. It has always felt like one of the conferences where peers network and exchange ideas on broader themes, which again is fair enough for a national meet. But I do agree…I have seen some good papers vanish into nothingness after the meet is over. I wonder if anyone reading this post has had a similar experience to share.
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