Although media reports highlighting flaws in the system often prompt the authorities to take corrective actions, sometimes those corrective actions are reversed after a brief interval to resurrect the old flaws for vested interests.
This has happened in the University of Karachi (KU), which has again included a fake journal in the list of its approved journals four months after it had been removed from the list following a media report which described how that journal, once dead, was mysteriously revived to publish backdated articles in a bid to help some faculty members achieve promotions.
A story published in The News on April 19, 2021, mentioned several research papers published in various issues of the KU history department’s Journal of History and Social Science (JHSS) that cited works produced after the date of publication of those issues — clearly indicating that those JHSS issues were not published in the dates inscribed on them. Instead, those issues were published some months or years later with backdated articles to fulfil individual interests.
On the first day of reopening after a month-long closure, the KU on Monday again legalised the JHSS by including it in the list of its approved journals. Benefiting from their articles published in the JHSS, some senior faculty members of the department have already acquired higher ranks in the past.
They were even promoted to the position of professors on the basis of those so-called research papers they had produced in the fake journal.
In the meantime, some teachers of the varsity, including Karachi University Teachers Society President Prof Dr Shah Ali Ul Qader, raised concerns time to time over such fraudulent practices at the varsity but they were not heard.
As the KU’s journal recognition committee has again approved the JHSS, the varsity administration has included the journal in the Board of Advance Studies & Research’s approved list. Now, the biannual issues of this journal can be accessed again on the KU website with all the blunders.
A dishonest affair
According to some faculty members of the KU, the purpose of backdating around a dozen issues of the journal was to help promote some teachers through unfair means. Before May 2019, it was January 2013 when the JHSS issue was last published. The journal, which was never recognised by the Higher Education Commission (HEC), was then apparently abandoned as it was not published for around six years.
However, in May 2019, a dozen issues of the journal suddenly appeared, heralding that the journal was not dead. A few more issues of the journal have also been published since then, in which not only local but also foreign scholars, including those from the United States and India, have contributed their papers.
To expose this academic corruption, The News on April 19 published that a number of JHSS issues contained research papers citing news stories, internet articles, and other papers that had not existed when those issues were produced. For instance, one of the authors had cited many news articles which were published in 2017 in his paper published in a 2014 JHSS issue.
When the news report appeared, many academics also dissociated themselves from the editorial staff of the journal, saying they were unaware of this fraud. Commenting on the recent inclusion of the journal in the approved list, Prof Qader, who is also a member of the approving committee, said he had objected to including the JHSS in the approved list but other members ignored his objections.
He added that he would write a letter to the relevant authorities to raise the matter as it was academic corruption that needed to be stopped. When a spokesperson for the KU was contacted, he said he had no knowledge about when and how the JHSS was again approved. When The News contacted KU Dean of Education Prof Dr Nasir Sulman, who is the convener of the journal approval committee, he declined to comment. “You can contact Prof Dr Shah Ali Ul Qader or Prof Dr Anila Ambar Malik. I am not here to answer your question,” he said.
