Over ‘inflated’ rankings, Chennai Dental College under investigation

As of March 2023, the Saveetha Dental College in Chennai claims to have 8,920 publications listed in the largest database in the world, SCOPUS. With 8,854 articles, Harvard School of Dental Medicine lost to it. The college has a staff of 75 excellent researchers and has published 12 papers in LANCET.

The college may have engaged in widespread self-citations, in which one researcher’s publication mentions another to elevate its stature in the area, according to a SCIENCE journal inquiry.

In 2022, a sentence from a study co-authored by scientists from the institution was cited in the SCIENCE publication, which was followed by 15 citations of other, less significant Saveetha Dental institution papers.

The study team rejected the claims as nonsense and misinformation. They contended that the allegations do not only apply to Saveetha Dental College but to other prestigious academic institutions worldwide.

The researchers maintained that a greater number of publications should be valued as proof of their arduous effort and the research facilities they have established, and claimed that there are no examples of any specific misconduct or breach of publishing ethics, such as plagiarism.

The team also made a point of pointing out that QS and other rankings do not include self-citations. They said that as a result, they could not see how this affected their rankings. The quantity of publications with high impact factors was cited as the reason for the success.

The college insisted that all of their data was in the public domain and could be checked, and they expressed confidence in the calibre of their work. The institute emphasised that it had a faculty publication ratio of 1:8, cutting-edge research facilities, and a big number of research scholars on staff. It also asserted that it had more patients than other European dental institutes that were ranked higher than it.

The dentistry college published a four-page response to the accusations made against them, denouncing the false information intended to harm India’s reputation.