Introduction: The Medical Council of India (MCI) is responsible for maintaining high standards of medical education in India. The Medical Council assesses the quality of medical education through medical teachers. Publication of at least two research papers is mandatory for promotion to the post of Associate Professor and Professor. However, the MCI recently issued a guideline followed by a clarification as to what counts as research publications. This has raised several issues and the guidelines have faced criticism. The present study aims to understand the perceptions of medical teachers to this clarification on research publication guidelines.
Methods: This was a cross-sectional, observational, questionnaire-based study in 153 medical teachers of a tertiary care hospital carried out during February and March 2016. A pre-validated questionnaire was filled by the participants in 30 minutes. The data was collected and analysed using numbers & percentages.
Results: Most of the teachers either agree (37.9%) or strongly agree (52.28%) that indexing criteria should involve other acceptable and reputed index agencies. A large number of medical teachers are in agreement that credit points should also be awarded to publications other than original articles. (92.8%). The majority of them (88.9%) believe that limiting credit to the first two authors is too restrictive and would hamper collaborative and multi-disciplinary research. Most of them (90%) fear that senior academicians might use their position to secure prime authorship.
Conclusion: The intentions of the MCI to streamline the process of promotion of medical teachers is perceived in good light. However, the ambiguities in these guidelines for research publications are evident from the perceptions of medical teachers as shown in this study. There is a need to rethink, relook and revise the current guidelines.
