| Indicator | University Z-score | Average country Z-score |
|---|---|---|
|
Multi-affiliation
|
-1.296 | -0.927 |
|
Retracted Output
|
-0.118 | 0.279 |
|
Institutional Self-Citation
|
1.788 | 0.520 |
|
Discontinued Journals Output
|
0.858 | 1.099 |
|
Hyperauthored Output
|
-1.210 | -1.024 |
|
Leadership Impact Gap
|
0.440 | -0.292 |
|
Hyperprolific Authors
|
2.293 | -0.067 |
|
Institutional Journal Output
|
-0.268 | -0.250 |
|
Redundant Output
|
-0.518 | 0.720 |
Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University presents a complex integrity profile, marked by significant strengths in operational governance alongside critical areas requiring strategic intervention. With an overall score of 0.234, the institution demonstrates exemplary control over practices such as multiple affiliations, hyper-authorship, and redundant publications, indicating robust internal policies in these domains. However, this is contrasted by a significant alert in the rate of hyperprolific authors and medium-risk signals in institutional self-citation and impact dependency. These vulnerabilities suggest a potential misalignment between the pursuit of quantitative metrics and the qualitative depth of research. The University's strong academic positioning, as evidenced by its SCImago Institutions Rankings in key areas like Environmental Science, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics, and Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology, provides a solid foundation for growth. To fully realize its mission of achieving "academic excellence" and "social responsibility," it is imperative to address the integrity risks that could undermine its global competitiveness. By recalibrating incentives to prioritize quality over volume and fostering a culture of genuine intellectual contribution, the University can ensure its commendable research output is built upon an unshakeable foundation of scientific integrity.
The institution exhibits a Z-score of -1.296, which is even lower than the national average of -0.927. This signifies a state of total operational silence regarding this indicator. The complete absence of risk signals, even when compared to an already low-risk national environment, suggests that the University's affiliation practices are exceptionally well-managed. This profile effectively rules out any systemic patterns of "affiliation shopping" or strategic attempts to artificially inflate institutional credit through questionable co-authorships.
With a Z-score of -0.118, the institution demonstrates notable resilience compared to the national average of 0.279. This suggests that while the national system shows a moderate vulnerability to retractions, the University's internal control mechanisms are successfully mitigating these systemic risks. A lower rate indicates that its quality control and supervision processes prior to publication are robust, providing an effective filter against the kind of recurring malpractice or lack of methodological rigor that can damage an institution's integrity culture.
The institution's Z-score for this indicator is 1.788, a figure that reveals high exposure to this risk, especially when compared to the national average of 0.520. Although this practice is present at a national level, the University's rate is substantially higher, indicating a greater propensity for operating within a scientific 'echo chamber.' Such a high value warns of potential endogamous impact inflation, where the institution's academic influence might be oversized by internal validation rather than by broader recognition from the global scientific community, suggesting a need to foster more external scrutiny.
The institution registers a Z-score of 0.858, demonstrating more effective management of this risk compared to the national average of 1.099. This indicates a differentiated approach, where the University is better at moderating a risk that appears to be common nationwide. Nevertheless, the score still represents an alert. It highlights the ongoing need for enhanced due diligence and information literacy in selecting dissemination channels to ensure that scientific production is not directed towards media lacking international ethical or quality standards, thereby safeguarding the institution from severe reputational harm.
The institution's Z-score of -1.210 contrasts sharply with the country's score of -1.024. This demonstrates a low-profile consistency, where the complete absence of risk signals at the institutional level aligns with, and even surpasses, the low-risk national standard. This result indicates that the University's authorship practices are well-calibrated to disciplinary norms, effectively avoiding the risk of author list inflation and ensuring that accountability and transparency are not diluted by 'honorary' or political authorship practices.
A moderate deviation is observed with the institution's Z-score of 0.440, which stands in contrast to the country's low-risk average of -0.292. This suggests the institution has a greater sensitivity to the risk of impact dependency. The positive gap indicates that a significant portion of its scientific prestige may be reliant on collaborations where it does not exercise intellectual leadership. This pattern signals a potential sustainability risk, inviting a strategic reflection on whether its excellence metrics are derived from genuine internal capacity or from advantageous positioning in external partnerships.
The institution's Z-score of 2.293 represents a critical alert and a severe discrepancy when compared to the national average of -0.067. This highly atypical level of risk activity is an outlier in the national context and requires a deep integrity assessment. Such extreme individual publication volumes challenge the plausible limits of meaningful intellectual contribution and point to a serious imbalance between quantity and quality. This indicator warns of potential systemic issues such as coercive authorship or authorship assigned without real participation—dynamics that prioritize metric inflation over the integrity of the scientific record.
The institution's Z-score of -0.268 is in near-perfect alignment with the national average of -0.250, demonstrating integrity synchrony in a context of maximum scientific security. This result confirms that the institution avoids over-reliance on its own journals, thus mitigating potential conflicts of interest and the risks of academic endogamy. By ensuring its research undergoes independent external peer review, the University strengthens its global visibility and confirms its commitment to competitive, merit-based validation.
With a Z-score of -0.518, the institution demonstrates a clear preventive isolation from the risk dynamics observed in the national environment, where the average is 0.720. This stark contrast indicates that the University does not replicate the nationally observed tendency towards data fragmentation. The absence of this risk signal suggests a strong institutional culture that values the publication of coherent, significant studies over the artificial inflation of output through 'salami slicing,' thereby protecting the integrity of the scientific evidence it produces.
