This science sleuth revealed a retraction crisis at Indian universities
Summary
Achal Agrawal, a former university researcher turned freelance data scientist, has exposed widespread research-integrity problems at Indian higher-education institutions. After a startling encounter with a student who used paraphrasing software and passed plagiarism checks, Agrawal left academia and founded India Research Watch (IRW), an online platform that tracks and publicises misconduct such as plagiarism and other causes of paper retractions.
IRW’s activities — including analyses using the Retraction Watch Database and a high-profile LinkedIn presence — helped spark policy change: in August 2025, India announced that its National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) will penalise universities with substantial numbers of retractions, a first for a national ranking system. Agrawal’s work highlights how publication targets and perverse incentives have encouraged quantity over quality in some institutions, particularly private ones.
Key Points
- Agrawal left his academic post in 2022 after witnessing casual attitudes to plagiarism and set up India Research Watch (IRW).
- IRW grew rapidly on LinkedIn and now hosts an anonymous portal for whistle-blowers, receiving many tips daily.
- Using Retraction Watch data, IRW showed India ranks third globally for retractions, mostly for integrity concerns.
- The Indian government revised the NIRF in 2025 to penalise institutions with high numbers of retracted papers — a novel policy lever to discourage misconduct.
- Analyses suggest some private institutions have inflated publication and citation counts without robust quality checks.
- The story links individual grassroots scrutiny to concrete policy change, signalling a shift in how academic incentives are evaluated in India.
Content summary
The article profiles Achal Agrawal’s trajectory from lecturer to research-integrity advocate. It describes IRW’s data-driven approach, its growing influence, and how its work fed into national debate and policy: the NIRF will now deduct marks for institutions with many retractions. The piece also situates the problem within broader incentive structures that reward publication volume over rigour, especially in some private universities.
Context and relevance
This is important for anyone following research policy, academic integrity or higher-education governance. It shows how transparent data and grassroots activism can prompt systemic change — here, a national ranking system adopting penalties for poor research practices. That matters for funders, administrators, early-career researchers and policymakers trying to realign incentives towards trustworthy science.
Why should I read this?
Short version: it’s a proper detective story for science — one person spots a rot, blows the whistle, builds an audience and forces policy-makers to act. If you care about the quality of research, how universities are judged, or why some places chase quantity over substance, this is exactly the tidy, readable case study you didn’t know you needed.
Author style
Punchy — the piece reads like a tight profile with stakes. It makes the point that individual, data-led scrutiny can trigger national-level fixes; if you follow research integrity or university metrics, pay attention.