 "Students in Lakhotia's laboratory in Banaras Hindu University worry their credibility could be questioned if they publish in low-impact journals")
Subhash Chandra Lakhotia knows he is fighting a losing battle. In his early seventies now, he has been on a mission of sorts for over five decades to make Indian science journals world class. To do that, Lakhotia expects Indian scientists to join his battle. But most have hung back. That “deeply upsets me”, he told me on a recent morning in his basic office-cum-lab on the first floor of the zoology department at Banaras Hindu University where he is a professor of cytogenetics, a branch of genetics that deals with chromosomes.
Lakhotia vented his unhappiness in a scathing editorial “Why
