Each year, the 500 undergraduates at Saveetha Dental College in Chennai, India, participate in 4-hour exams that require them to write a 1500-word manuscript on research they have conducted. After faculty and students review and revise the papers, they use an online tool to add references to previously published work. Many of the papers are then submitted to and published by journals; the process contributed to the more than 1400 scholarly works the dental school published last year.
Saveetha, which calls itself a “pioneer in undergraduate publications,” says the exercise is designed to help every student gain practical research experience—as well as at least 10 publications listed in Scopus, the vast literature database maintained by the publisher Elsevier. The college’s website boasts that one Saveetha student published 24 papers.
But the torrent of undergraduate manuscripts—on topics including fruit intake by students and awareness of mental health among teenagers—also appears to serve a less savory purpose, an investigation by Retraction Watch has found. By systematically citing other papers published by Saveetha faculty—including papers on completely unrelated topics—the undergraduate publications have helped dramatically inflate the number of citations, a key measure of academic merit, linked to Saveetha.
Read the rest of this Science-Retraction Watch story here.
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Thanks for investigating this matter. First off, 500 dental students per year????!!! Dental universities usually admit about 20 to 40 students per year. It is almost impossible to train more than this number, unless at the expense of quality. This mega-huge number (500 students per year) requires lots and lots of expensive dental chairs, expensive dental equipment, campus space, professors, and staff. Without adequate dental equipment and professors, the level of education would be just terrible. I wonder how well the quality and quantity of their equipment and professors as well as the quality of their dental education are.
Secondly, are those 500 so-called research projects (done by last-year students each year) reviewed and approved by their IRB and ethics committee? If they aren’t, then there are a lot of problems here. If they are, I wonder how big and fast and ACCURATE can be an IRB to review 500 projects per year.
3. Are the proposals of those so-called research projects reviewed and pre-registered beforehand? If not, then a lot of students can simply write imaginary methods for their so-called research, and “bend” their methods the way they want during that 4-hour exam. If yes, then I wonder how big and effective can be the reviewing IRB that can review 500 proposals per year (besides 500 finished studies per year).
4. What about these students’ theses? Are these so-called studies their theses? Or do they also have dental theses? If they also have dental theses in addition to those so-called studies, I wonder how effective and large can be their IRB and their supervising professors. If they don’t have any dental theses, that explains a lot (ie, they are mass-producing dentists, without really caring for quality).
5. Is it good to write a manuscript within 4 hours? A proper manuscript should be carefully written within weeks, if not months. A very rushed writing practice will introduce a lot of errors in the papers.
Thanks for commenting. The dental school has 500 undergrads in total (100 per year), as you can see here: https://www.nirfindia.org/nirfpdfcdn/2022/pdf/Dental/IR-N-I-1441.pdf. All the undergrads do at least three research projects every year with the goal of getting them all published.
Thanks for your clarification. OK, that’s much better. Still, I don’t understand how their annual “manuscript writing exam” involves 500 students. This means that all students (from freshmen to interns) take this exam each year. This means:
1. The very rookie and inexperienced freshmen or sophomore students will do so-called scientific research and write so-called scientific articles (at those annual exams). I prefer not to think about the quality of such so-called studies. Even last-year students can’t properly do it, unless properly guided by their mentors. Let alone, freshmen.
2. This means that each student will write 5 papers during his/her 5-year course of study. This procedure means: A total of 500 research proposals each year. A total of 500 proposal approvals each year. A total of 500 ethics approvals each year. Processing 500 “1st research progress reports” each year. Processing 500 “2nd research progress reports” each year. Processing “500 finalized research reports” each year…. Their IRB and Ethics Committee must be pretty busy 24/7. Even at that rate, they can never ever process that many proposals and reports. Also their supervising professors must be busy 24/7, to no avail.
3. For an interested reader, I think my previously mentioned concerns #2 to #5 remain to be speculated or addressed.
Concerning (lack of) IRB approval, my suspicion from the few quoted examples of titles is that much of the “research” is observational studies that probably don’t need one in the first place. You can most likely ask fellow students how much fruit they eat and correlate that with their major, their gender, and a bunch of other not too personal information without IRB approval, for instance. The output is of course likely to be useless, but the process does not have to be unethical 😉
I understand, Astro. But still an IRB approval is necessary. Why? Because:
1. Even simple, friendly, harmless-looking, and anonymized surveys can be unethical in some situations. For example, asking certain questions can be rude or harming. Or asking any questions (even the safest ones) without obtaining informed consent is unethical.
2. As you stated, some surveys are totally safe and benign. But that is NOT for the student/researcher to decide. It is only the IRB that can judge if the ethics approval can be waived. The student/researcher is not allowed to decide about ethics.
3. IRB approval are not only about ethics. They are also about merit and technicality, which can never be dodged. These include: The use and MERIT of a study, its methodological soundness, and all technical aspects.
For example, the IRB will ask that student “what is the use of knowing how much your classmates are familiar with John Wayne?”. The student must justify this. They will ask the student “Why are you surveying your classmates? They may be biased in responding. You should do cluster randomization, instead!”… Or they can tell the student “you need a sample size of at least 800 participants” and your target size (ie, 75) is not enough.
All researchers still need to justify the merit of their study (eg, why should we spend time and resources for this study? Is it even useful? How does it help anybody? etc).
Furthermore, they need to polish its technical aspects (eg, is this particular survey design good enough? Is this sample size adequate? etc etc).
Shocked; if you review the papers that have been published, you will find answers to some of your questions and some confirmation of your concerns.
There are many papers that are merely survey results of the student body: “Are dental students aware about X.”
There are also many short papers with very little scientific value (editorials, letters, short communications). There seem to be a number of short reviews.
There are also publications in some shady-looking journals that may be predatory, but are clearly of low-quality.
Thanks for the update Cheshire. I bet many of them are data fabrication too!
Many of our last-year doctorate students who had questionnaires for their theses used to survey for example 200 individuals and then repeat it twice to make their sample look like 600 participants! Some others would not even bother to do any smallest surveys. They would just do everything from imagination! Now those were all last-year doctorate students (who had passed courses on ethics in research, medical ethics, stats, etc, etc) working on their theses.
Many of these 500 students are freshmen and sophomores, many of whom have no idea about research or its ethics. And none of these so-called studies are their doctoral theses.
They have 550 dental chairs, reportedly.
In case you aren’t aware, there are a lot of people in India. Tamil Nadu alone has more than 75 million.
550 dental chairs would be somehow adequate (after some compromises) for 100 students per year (and not for what I had thought: 500 students per year).
After the second year, all students will need dental chairs in different departments. These include: restorative dentistry, orthodontics, fixed prosthodontics, removable prosthodontics, endodnotics, periodontics, maxillofacial surgery, radiology, dental medicine and diagnostics, etc. This means about 60 dental chairs per department.
Now, they have 300 students (3 last years * 100 each) rotating in departments that have about only 60 dental chairs each.
That definitely means a lot of compromises in terms of quality of education.
Not to mention that this number of students will also need expensive equipment and a lot of professors.
As for your other argument, yes I know the population of India. Who doesn’t? However, the fact that they are populated does not mean that their universities should or can be such crowded (unless by lowering their quality of education).
We have many citizens who travel to India to study dentistry in order to be able to circumvent our very difficult university entrance exam (because in India, everybody can study dentistry; but in our country, only the best of the best can study dentistry).
Nevertheless, our Ministry of Health does not approve medical or dental degrees issues by any universities in India. You probably know why.
So yes, I know they are populated, and no it is not justified for any state to have such crowded universities just because they are a populated nation.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sensible institutions that aren’t showered with ammurican money are capable of being flexible. It’s hilarious that you think that there’s no way to deal with multiple disciplines without duplicating equipment five times over.
1. What does “American money” have to do in your conversation with ‘Shocked’? Did you just assume he/she is from U.S? Just so you know, like yourself, not everyone who reads Retraction Watch is from America.
2. I kindly ask you to at least show the minimal level of respect to a country by spelling the its name correctly, the same way other commentators in this post show respect to ‘India’.
Great reporting, in any case. However, please, be diligent to put it into a bigger picture.
What is new: a huge source of citations uncovered.
What is not new: this very institution has long been on the radar. Just have a look at Lakshmi Thangavelu, her output, and her co-authorship network.
https://app.dimensions.ai/discover/publication?search_mode=content&and_facet_researcher=ur.010314561647.23
Probably, Nick Wise can offer his comment, too.
Look at this case in this institution very keenly. Just have a look at Vishnupriya Veera raghavan her research output of 294 articles in same journal drug invention today , and her co-authorship network with china and Saudi authors which is ridiculous and citations has immensely grown in past 2 years also the H index output . This needs to be thoroughly investigated .Also another case of highly published author Dhanraj Ganapathy who published 367 articles in drug invention today also been increasing the research publication output .
Its not new in any Indian organisation for individual researchers to collaborate with international authors and publish collaborative papers . It is important for any organization to encourage the institutions to participate in international arena in collaborative research with global network .
Ah yes, it’s definitely international collaboration that’s causing this! Nothing to see here!
It’s completely normal that ‘top researchers’ like Dhanraj Ganapathy publish articles such as ‘Awareness Among Dental Students About the Use of General Anaesthesia for Oral Surgery’ and ‘Awareness Of Conscious Sedation in Paediatric Dentistry-A Questionnaire Survey’ in the journal named “Journal of Survey in Fisheries Sciences”. Oh, and then another 10-20 articles in the same year, in the same journal.
https://gyazo.com/c635f82e6e7b46083cfb6a109f9f4078
This is simply a fraudulent citation and publication circle-jerk to artificially boost the university’s ‘ranking’.
A deeper look at the story raises some troubling questions. It looks like there was more than one faculty member involved in this issue. Also, if the faculty members truly had no knowledge or active participation in this, why are they still employed and/or affiliated with the dental college? Shouldn’t they have resigned their posts immediately? There is more to this than meets the eye
https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/education/2378847-saveetha-dental-college-overtakes-harvard-universitys-dental-school-and-becomes-number-one-in-research-publishing-in-the-w
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/saveetha-dental-college-becomes-first-indian-institution-to-get-top-13-in-qs-world-university-ranking/articleshow/98972941.cms
They claim to be the #1 Dental research school in the world! All on the basis of these type of scams.
As an unhappy resigned researcher from Saveetha Dental, I am and all of my colleagues will be Really happy to see this article. To be frank, this article, if it comes before 2-3 years back, many of the real researchers may have got good life. Anyway, i/we am really really thankful to the author/editor Dr.FREDERIK JOELVING for revealing this unethical practice by the saveetha dental college. Sad but true, this article will not make any impact to them, as none of the top-level administration (Registrar/Deans) are not aware of what is real research. They will ignore all this and continue the same and maybe after few years, you may need to write this story again. The outer world should know few points, 1. There is the research Dean – Dr. Deepa. G MDS, Ph.D – Associate Dean of Research (see her profile mean for self-citation guru – https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?hl=en&user=B5GnPgsAAAAJ 2018- just 120 citations, 2019 – 1000 citations, and 2020 – 1500 citations), but she doesnt even know, how to write a abstract of international manuscript. she never had any international exposure or research exposure, and she is heading all the research faculties. Without any knowledge, she is heading the research faculties, and her plan of self-citations ruins the college’s name. she is not even fit to be a normal college research dean, but by being top level recommendation, she still continues as research dean, even after this much big issue, she didnt comeup for resignation. She knows well, if she resign, she will not even get a clerk post in any college. 2. Another Person – Dr. Dhanraj ganapathy – another reason for the self-citation mafia (https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=-xEexPoAAAAJ&hl=en), the college will do 1000 of projects, and those manuscripts will be come to him, and he will add 20-35 papers of him and college faculties (without knowlege of the research faculties too), bulkly communicated to scopus journals deals by Dr. Lakshmi T. 3. Dr. Vishnupriya (https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=bfG2dVcAAAAJ&hl=en), see her ghost profile, the greed of low quality papers- lady who destoryed the college name in publishing the predatory journals, she is having almost nearly 500 papers in one predatory journal. Imagine how much she is crazy for publishing the low quality papers. She also have good quality papers, by taking money-based authorships, and also her department research faculties have to keep her name without any contributions – Ghost Author.4. Dr. S. Aravind Kumar – He is the principal, and i even dont know whether he completed phd or not. But he calls himself as professor. He holds power and he wont allow any researcher to question the mistakes. Infact, if the author didnt self cite the college articles, he/she will be deal in different way, and make them out of college. He dont want papers, but with power, he will supress the opposite voices. Without democratic, power sector of he and his group makes the research dump. 5. Dr. T. Lakshmi – Deals all the financial dealings, international contact seeker, catching adjunct faculties for the name of money, add her names too papers, if any one sells papers in facebook, linkdin or twitter, she immediately catch and purchases the manuscript. Commision seeker – What ever she does for college, she will take part of the amount and enjoy. To be frank, these above five persons are just crorepati only becoz of the college by different scams. 6. Dr. Sheeja Varghese (Hided her google scholar after this science paper published) – never worked on any research but check her profile. She is also the dentist. These people research also not doing research any ethical commitee meeting or animal board meeting. For them quality never matters, they need just quantity for aiming the ranks. 7. Dr. RAJESHKUMAR Shanmugam – at the age of 34 around he become direct professor, i think this will never happens anywhere in the world. College will ask, to do 1000 of projects, and he single handedly take over 500 around project that 99% of the data are fake and through bulk publishing scopus, he published almost all of them, with self citations. Kindly check his profile (https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=KKxvtdQAAAAJ&hl=en – Google scholar, https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=57195616808 – scopus ). The difference between the google scholar and scopus is 10000 citations, and from this you can understand how many self citations. He is the most toxic person, and act like good to researchers, and same way he does to high profile power sectors and pass the informations, about research faculties. Almost the higher number of projects, self citations, low quality publications are his idea, and college doesnot have any shame to appoint him as professor, just by doing by politics he has attained this. Did any college appoint unexperienced person as professor that to in 34th age? Even the date of this science article published, see how many garbage predatory papers. What is the use of all these shits? You all people may think, why the director is not caring. The truth is the above mentioned people never allowed director to understand about the problems. Director sir only problems is he should understand these above mentioned peoples are not knowledgable and they are showing wrong paths to the college. Atleast he should appoint a internationally experienced/ethically correct person, who also ready to say no for wrong things as a research dean. Also instract researchers and clinicians to publish only papers in high quality journals with impact factors. LIke you all, i am also praying god, director should understand the publication ethics, and follow the international publication standard, and immediately remove the above mentioned power sectors & psedo publishers. Then only we may see a new development with a real growth, which is good for stable long run.
Thanks and seeking ur opinion
Alumni – Forced Resigner from SDC