Fourteen universities may have manipulated institutional rankings, analysis finds
Massive increase in publication rates could point to unethical behaviour such as gift authorship
In 2019, researchers based at India’s Chandigarh University published 362 peer-reviewed research studies. In 2023, that number had shot up to 2281 – a 530% increase – which has seen Chandigarh jump from a ranking below 2000th to 578th in Elsevier’s SciVal tool ranking tool that examines the number of papers over 24,000 institutions publish annually.
Chandigarh is not the only university whose fortunes in these rankings have changed drastically. A total of 80 universities worldwide increased their research output by 100% or more, compared with a global average of around 20% between 2019 and 2023, according to a recent analysis.