India’s Journal Lists After UGC-CARE: What Changed

UGC no longer maintains an approved journal list. The decision about which journals count has moved to institutions, and each one needs a written policy to handle it.

Explainer · 9 min read · Directive Publications Editorial Team

The short version

For several years, Indian universities and colleges answered the question "does this journal count?" by checking the UGC-CARE list, maintained under the University Grants Commission's Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics. That list no longer exists as a living register.

In 2025 the University Grants Commission (UGC) did three things:

1. It discontinued UGC-CARE listing of journals.
2. It issued suggestive parameters for choosing peer-reviewed journals, leaving the actual choice to faculty, students and institutions.
3. It approved the upload of a frozen reference list of the journals that were on UGC-CARE on 10 February 2025, while stating that the list implies no endorsement.

The practical effect is that responsibility has moved. A central list once did the filtering for you. Now your institution's own policy does, and if your institution has not written one, nobody is doing the filtering at all.

The timeline, from the notices themselves

Everything below comes from two UGC public notices: the discontinuation notice of 11 February 2025 and the follow-up notice of 16 July 2025. Read both in full if you are drafting institutional policy.

Two details in the July notice matter for anyone writing policy. First, the parameters are called "suggestive", yet the notice asks institutions, faculty, researchers and students to "take due note" and "adhere to these guidelines" for academic and research publication activities. Second, the notices do not set out a new approval mechanism to replace the list. The parameters are criteria for judgement, not a register.

What the suggestive parameters actually cover

The final parameters are grouped under eight headings, with 35 numbered items. The table summarises them; the notice gives the exact wording.

The final version differs slightly from the February draft. The draft had 36 items, including a separate item on full-text online availability, which does not appear as its own item in the final list. Item 7.1 also changed from "Impact Factor" to "Impact Factor or Similar Factor". If your institution adopted the draft wording in early 2025, compare it against the final annexure.

What the parameters do not give you

They do not give thresholds. Item 6.2 asks for a similarity score "not exceeding standard limits" and item 8.1 asks for self-citation "within a prescribed range compared to peer journals", but neither sets a number. They do not name which databases count as "reputed". Several items, such as font and design, are matters of judgement. This is deliberate: the notice suggests that institutions set up internal committees to fine-tune the parameters for their own disciplines. Until a committee does that, the parameters cannot be applied consistently.

The frozen list: a record, not an approval

The 1,474-journal list is the part most likely to be misused. The July notice describes it as "a reference resource only" and states that "the inclusion or exclusion of a journal in this list does not imply validation or endorsement by the Commission."

Use it for what it is: evidence of what was on UGC-CARE on 10 February 2025. That can help when a promotion file or thesis record refers to a paper published while the list was active. Do not use it as a current approved list. A journal can change ownership, editorial standards or website after a fixed date, and the list will not show it.

Some journal websites still advertise themselves as "UGC-CARE approved" or "compliant with the new UGC framework". Neither phrase describes a current UGC endorsement, because no such endorsement process exists now. Fraudulent copies of legitimate journal sites are a separate risk; our guide to spotting a cloned journal website covers how to confirm you are on the genuine site.

Medical institutions: a second rulebook

If you work in a medical college, UGC is not the only regulator whose rules decide whether a paper counts. The National Medical Commission's Medical Institutions (Qualifications of Faculty) Regulations, 2025, published in the Gazette on 30 June 2025 and listed on the NMC rules and regulations page, carry their own definition.

Under those regulations, a "research publication" means only original papers, meta-analyses, systematic reviews and case series published in journals indexed in named databases, including Medline, PubMed Central, Science Citation Index, Embase, Scopus and the Directory of Open Access Journals, plus other journals the Commission may specify. The promotion criteria then refer to that definition. For example, eligibility for Professor includes at least two research publications after becoming Associate Professor, with the faculty member among the first three authors.

Three practical consequences follow for medical authors:

• Article type matters, not just the journal. A single-patient case report or a letter is not on the NMC list of article types, even in an indexed journal. Plan promotion-relevant work as original research, systematic reviews or case series.
• Indexing must be checked at the source. Confirm a journal's coverage in the database itself rather than relying on the journal's own claim. Our explainer on what Scopus, Web of Science and DOAJ indexing really means explains how.
• Author position counts. Where the rule says "among the first three authors", agree author order early.

Where UGC and NMC rules both apply, as in some university departments that include medical faculty, your institution should state in writing which rule governs which decision.

What institutions should do now

If your institution still refers to "UGC-CARE journals" in its promotion rules, PhD ordinances or incentive schemes, those references now point at a list that is no longer maintained. Work through these steps:

1. Find every reference to UGC-CARE in your statutes, ordinances, appointment and promotion forms, and publication incentive schemes.
2. Set up the internal committee the July notice suggests, with members from each major discipline and the library.
3. Turn the parameters into a working checklist. Decide which items are mandatory, which databases count as reputed for each discipline, and what evidence an applicant must attach.
4. Decide a transition rule. State how you will treat papers published in journals that were on the frozen list, for example by publication date.
5. Separate regulator rules. Record where NMC or another regulator's definition applies instead of, or in addition to, your own.
6. Publish the policy and a contact. Faculty and students need to know where to send a doubtful journal before they submit, not after acceptance.
7. Review it on a schedule. Journals change, and the notice itself expects parameters to be fine-tuned "from time to time".

The same applies to research supervision. The UGC PhD regulations of 2022 require supervisors to have a set number of publications in "peer-reviewed or refereed journals". With no central list, your committee is now the body that defines what counts as peer-reviewed for that purpose. Our guide on how promotion committees should evaluate journals suggests ways to judge the work itself rather than the venue alone.

What individual authors should do now

Before you submit, check three things in this order:

1. Your institution's current policy. Ask the research office or IQAC which criteria now apply, and get the answer in writing if a promotion or degree depends on it.
2. Your regulator's rules. For medical faculty, check the NMC definition of a research publication and the article types it covers.
3. The journal itself. Work through the parameters that matter most: a verifiable ISSN, a named editorial board, a published peer review policy, transparent fees, and indexing you have confirmed in the database. Our guide to choosing the right journal without getting scammed walks through each check.

Keep a short record of what you checked and when. If your institution later questions a journal, a dated record of your due diligence is far more useful than a screenshot of a "UGC-CARE approved" badge.

The real change

No list can guarantee a journal's quality, and the end of UGC-CARE does not change what a good journal looks like. What it changes is who does the checking. Institutions now have to say what they value and why, and authors have to check journals themselves rather than relying on a single list. That is more effort, but the judgement now sits with the people who know the discipline. Directive Publications sets out its author guidelines and peer review process openly, so you can check them against whichever criteria your institution adopts.