Thursday, March 01, 2012

Publishing in top journals

Indian academics are being exhorted these days to publish in top journals, many of them US-based. That's how you build knowledge, become thought leaders, we are told. Now, however true this may be for the pure sciences, one has always had reservations about applying this philosophy to b-schools. B-schools teach management, which is the application of knowledge, preferably, to the local context. How arcane research can contribute to this objective has always been an issue.

It is refreshing, therefore, to come across a different point of view being urged by Britain's universities minister, David Willetts. Andrew Hill, writing in his blog in the FT, quotes Willetts as saying that publishing in US peer-reviewed journals mostly involves analysing US data- and Willetts can't see how that will help the UK. He also faults the 'rarefied and recherche' nature of much management research. So, we come back to very basic - and still unanswered questions. What is meaningful research at b-schools? What relative weights do we accord to teaching and research in b-schools?

The sooner India's leading b-schools find answers to these questions, the better. It should not be that they recast incentives in favour of publishing abroad only to find themselves of diminishing relevance in their own environment.

8 comments:

Pavan Nuggehalli said...
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Anonymous said...

I am not an academician and therefore cannot fathom the content of this blog. But as a person from industry, I would urge research institutes to consider one aspect while conducting and writing research reports - "How can research reports be made more implementable and lucid that can be acceptable to the mass at large and not only to the elite executive & Board members".

Anonymous said...

It is true that much of the research in US b-schools is US centric. It is also true that much of that research is far removed from reality. Finally it can be said that a lot of that research follows a particular pattern (eg you must analyze data - in most cases that is), and innovative ideas not following the pattern are likely to be rejected in the review process. However, there is one thing I must say in favor of US-based research - its rigor. I think that is one area where management research in India has a lot of catching up to do. Once that is ensured, I agree with you that it is a much better idea to do research that is locally relevant.

Anonymous said...

Indian bschools should reward faculty for publishing in 'international' and 'emerging market' journals rather than 'american' or 'british' or 'european' journals. There has to be incentives to publish because how else will quality of their work be judged? At present, Indian professors write reports and working papers which are not peer reviewed by the profession and therefore questions will be asked of them.

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Rahul said...

What exactly mean by Top B School? What is definition? Tomorrow we will come to know that it means producing top foolish graduates.......

we have top panwala in our town.... also top sweeper in our town who clean our city streets... we also have top garbage yard in the city every corner....

These top concept become subject of debate in India. Why ? because this Top Business has no global recognition..

These concept of "Top" do not fit into Global Standard of Business Schools.

Because none of these Top has ever produced any Nobel Laureates or Noble Prize Nominee forget about Nobel Prize winning ability of these so called "Top" B Schools in India.

ashka said...

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