KU renews ban on accrediting research published by OMICS

KUWAIT CITY, July 15: The Kuwait University recently renewed the ban on accrediting research published in the Indian OMICS journal, an issue that the Al-Qabas daily had highlighted in December 2017, stressing that the research published in this journal was not approved for the purpose of scientific promotions and that it did not fund any conferences organized by the journal.

Al-Qabas had opened the file of the suspicious journal and followed it closely, which achieved a wide interaction from the highest levels, represented by the announcement by the Ministry of Higher Education at the time of the formation of a fact-finding committee regarding what was published under the title ‘A suspicious Indian magazine that relies on 84 research papers in Kuwait’, which later resulted in decisions issued by the Council of Ministers and the Kuwait University in April 2018 banned the approval of any research published in this journal.

In a circular issued recently, a copy of which has been obtained by the daily, the Acting Rector of Kuwait University, Dr. Badr Al-Badawi, said the decisions issued by the University Council previously, which are aimed at not accrediting research published in OMICS, and not counting research papers in “open access” journals unless it was listed in the databases approved in accordance with the academic standards of Kuwait University, and urged the participating faculty members who are affiliated with the OMICS journals to cancel their membership from these journals that may harm the reputation of Kuwait University globally.

The circular indicated that researchers should not be compensated for the fees for publishing scientific research in open-access journals unless they have an impact factor and are included in the JCR database, and that the funding of scientific missions for conferences organized by the OMICS should not be approved.

In the context, informed sources revealed that the university is still suffering from the repercussions of not adopting the research published in OMICS for promotions, as it faced a lawsuit, by one of the professors who insisted on using their published research to calculate it in promotions, which required the university to reaffirm its decisions Issued in 2018.