Considering the fact that the Universities, as well as the R&D organizations are experiencing problems of retaining high quality S&T manpower, NCST, in its 2nd meeting, decided, inter-alia, that the salaries of highly qualified Scientists and Technologists should be brought at par with those prevailing in Industry, so as to attract the brightest students to opt for careers in various Scientific and Technological fields. The Ministry of Science and Technology, in consultation with PCST, decided to grant Research Productivity Allowance to active scientists on the basis of their publications in international Journals and their performance, as evaluated empirically by Journal Impact Factors, Citations and Peer Review.
RPA Criteria
- Research contributions of one year (i.e. of 2016 in case of recently announced RPA-2017) are considered in research areas such as publications, patents, books authored/edited, PhDs supervised, external research grants. However for citation count, publication of recent three years (i.e. of years 2014-16 in case of RPA-2017) are considered.
- Equal divisibility among the number of contributing researchers is applied in case of published/edited book, impact factor and citation of publications, patents and applied research output. However, in case of PhD Supervision / Research Grants, having multiple Supervisors / Investigators, 50% of the respective score is awarded to Principal Supervisor and Principal Investigator respectively while the rest of 50% score is equally divided among the numbers of Co-Supervisors and Co-Investigators respectively. In case of sole PhD Supervisor and investigator in Research Grant, maximum score are awarded to the applicant.
- Innovation/Applied Research Output consisting of Engineering, Medical/Biomedical and Agricultural sub-fields will be assessed by committees comprising experts from the respective fields.
- Books published by the reputed publishers only are considered. Further, books published by black-listed publishers such as Lambert (LAP) and VDM etc. are not considered.
- Publication in impact factor journal only is considered. ISI (Institute of Scientific Information) is used as source for the Impact Factor and Citation.
- Benchmarks for different parameters will no longer be based on the highest score of an individual; rather the benchmarks will be rationalized using the mean of the highest scores in each subject. Scaling shall be applied in a way that everyone scoring higher than the mean benchmark shall be given 100% of that parameter.
- Like PSP, RPA also be categorized subject wise, and the number of awards in each subject will be proportionate to the number of applicants.
- Despite of some overlapping in the subjects, the change of subject from year to year is not encouraged, and any change, if at all, needs to be justified in a written application.
- Any scientist who is black listed by the Higher Education Commission based on plagiarism may not be considered for both RPA and PSP.
- The weightage for different research areas under the revised RPA criteria is as under:
| S# | Parameters |
Weight |
| a. |
Cumulative impact factor |
20% |
| b. |
Citations
- Total citations
- Citations per article |
30%
10%
|
| c. |
Patents Granted |
10% |
| e. |
Ph.D. Supervised |
05% |
| f. |
Books Published / Edited |
05% |
| g. |
External research grants |
10% |
| h. |
Applied Research Output/Innovation |
10% |
English