Leadership Development Programme for Academic Leaders · Day 3 · Session FN 1
Research Leadership: From Individual Research to Institutional Research Culture
Dr. Shalini Kapoor Professor of Periodontology and Director, Research and Development SGT University, Gurugram
SGT University
Research, National Priorities and Curriculum Leadership
Central question of Day 3
How can academic leaders make their institutions intellectually relevant to India's future?
This session's answer: an institution is intellectually relevant only when research is a shared institutional capability, sustained beyond any one individual.
Opening question
Two institutions published 120 papers each last year. Which one would you fund for five years?
Institution A
120
indexed papers
70 percent from six faculty members
Two of the six hold offers elsewhere
Few postgraduate first authors
Institution B
120
indexed papers
60 faculty members published
40 papers with a postgraduate first author
25 papers across two or more departments
The number is identical. What differs is what lies underneath it.
Session outcomes
By the end of this hour, each participant will be able to
Distinguish individual research productivity from institutional research culture using the research ecosystem framework.
Rate the School or institution they lead on eight dimensions of research culture and identify the two largest gaps.
Select five institutional research indicators that go beyond publication counts, justified against NIRF, NAAC or ANRF expectations.
Commit to one mentoring action and one collaboration action for the coming academic term, with a named owner and an observable result.
Concept
Research is produced by individuals; a research culture is what remains when they leave
Concept
Four levers change as research moves from a person to an institution
Stage
Who owns the question
Who carries the risk
What ensures continuity
Where quality is checked
Individual researcher
One faculty member
The person's time, reputation and funds
Nothing; it stops when the person stops
The journal reviewer, after the work is done
Research group
A lead with students and one or two colleagues
The group, buffered by shared equipment and students
The lead; a group rarely outlives its founder
Group meetings and internal reading of drafts
Institutional research culture
Thematic clusters aligned with an institutional agenda
The institution, through seed grants, protected time and infrastructure
Policy, mentoring pipelines, succession in cluster leadership
A research culture is the set of shared expectations, incentives, habits and structures that shape how research is proposed, done, reviewed, rewarded and passed on.
Indian policy context
National policy now expects research of every institution, not only of elite institutes
NEP 2020, Chapter 17
Research capacity in every higher education institution
Calls for a National Research Foundation to seed and grow research across universities and colleges, and for research to be part of the mission of every HEI.
ANRF Act 2023, in force December 2023
An apex body with a Rs 50,000 crore target for 2023 to 2028
Absorbs SERB; Rs 14,000 crore budgetary, the rest from industry, philanthropy and other non-government sources. Governing Board chaired by the Prime Minister.
Implication for leaders: funding instruments now ask institutional questions about ethics infrastructure, data policy, industry interface and succession.
Sources: Ministry of Education, National Education Policy 2020; Anusandhan National Research Foundation Act, 2023; PIB, Aims of ANRF, 18 December 2024.
Indian policy context
The State's own instrument for spreading research culture is mentoring between institutions
ANRF PAIR programme
Partnerships for Accelerated Innovation and Research
Hubs: top NIRF-ranked institutions; spokes: central and state public universities and selected NITs and IIITs
Seven networks, seven hubs and 45 spokes, selected in 2025; eleven further hubs supported for a year
Budget split 30:70 in favour of the spokes; at least one spoke outside the hub's state
Mentoring and collaboration are the mechanism the Government has chosen. They are the two multipliers in this session's framework.
Sources: DST, ANRF's PAIR programme; PIB, ANRF supports 7 premier institutions and 45 partnering spokes, April 2025.
Indian policy context
Funding is moving toward institutional and translational instruments
RDI Scheme · approved 1 July 2025
Rs 1 lakh crore
Long-tenor, low-interest finance for private-sector research at TRL 4 and above; ANRF's Governing Board gives strategic direction. Institutions that partner with industry gain a new route.
One Nation One Subscription · from 1 January 2025
Rs 6,000 crore
2025 to 2027; about 13,000 journals from 30 publishers for roughly 6,300 government institutions, with support for open-access charges. Access is no longer the constraint; capacity to use it is.
National research intensity
about 0.8% of GDP
Gross expenditure on R&D. Most developed countries spend more than 2 percent of GDP on research. The higher-education share of India's total has historically been small, and that is the gap these instruments address.
Sources: PIB, Cabinet approves RDI Scheme, 1 July 2025; Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser, One Nation One Subscription; DST, Research and Development Statistics at a Glance 2025-26.
Framework
The research ecosystem: enabling conditions create activity; governing conditions make it a culture
Centre
Leadership vision and research agenda: the only element that touches every other.
Inner ring · enabling conditions
Mentoring, collaboration, infrastructure, funding. They convert vision into activity and reinforce one another.
Outer boundary · governing conditions
Quality assurance, recognition and incentives, ethics and integrity. They decide whether activity is trustworthy, sustained and rewarded.
Framework
Each dimension is a question a Dean or Head can answer tonight
Dimension
Leadership question
A. Leadership vision and research agenda
Does the School know what it wants to be known for in ten years?
B. Mentoring and researcher development
Does a new faculty member have a named mentor and a first project within a year?
C. Collaboration, internal and external
Do departments share problems, equipment and students, and are there living partnerships outside?
D. Infrastructure and research support
Can a researcher get equipment time, statistical help and grant support without personal favours?
E. Funding and resource mobilisation
Is there seed money for untested ideas, and a route from seed to external grant?
F. Quality assurance
Is design reviewed before data collection, and is there internal peer review before submission?
G. Recognition and incentives
Do appraisal and promotion reward quality, mentoring and collaboration, or only counts?
H. Research ethics and integrity
Are ethics committees timely, are authorship and data policies published, is misconduct handled consistently?
Multiplier one
Mentoring multiplies people: one researcher who mentors three changes a School in six years
Multiplier two
Collaboration and mentoring raise output and protect it when the most productive people leave
Quality
Quality is not what a journal decides; it is what an institution does before submission
1
Design review before data collection
A weak design cannot be rescued by a good statistician later.
2
Ethics approval as a scholarly conversation
Not a stamp; a reading of the question and the method.
3
Internal peer review of drafts
One reader outside the author's department, two-week turnaround.
4
A research integrity office with a published procedure
Integrity does not depend on who the author is.
India Rankings 2025: Publications score = 35 × f(P/FRQ) − 7.5 × f(Pret); Quality of Publications carries an equal deduction for retracted citations. Volume without quality now costs the institution marks.
Source: NIRF, India Rankings 2025, Methodology for Ranking of Academic Institutions in India (Overall), Research and Professional Practice parameter.
Research Culture Diagnostic
Score the School you lead on eight dimensions, with evidence, and mark your two largest gaps
Instructions
Score the School or Faculty you lead. Directors and university-level leaders may score the institution.
Use the descriptors. Choose the level that describes what actually happens, not what the policy document says.
Write one piece of evidence for each score.
Mark the two dimensions with the largest gap between the current score and the score you want in three years.
Scale
1
Absent
2
Emerging
3
Established: the practice exists and works for most people most of the time
4
Embedded
5
Exemplary
Research Culture Diagnostic · live instrument
The profile matters more than the total
Activity · individual diagnostic
Twelve minutes: score all eight dimensions, record evidence, mark your two largest gaps
While you score
Which dimension did you find hardest to score honestly?
Which practice exists on paper but not in behaviour?
Who in your School would be lost to research if their mentor left tomorrow?
Activity · table discussion
Eight minutes: compare profiles and agree one action a Dean can take within a term
Table task
Which two dimensions are weakest across the table?
Is the low score a matter of policy, resources or habit?
For one dimension: a single action within one term, the person who owns it, and what will be observably different in six months.
Debrief
The room's profile: which two gaps appeared most often, and why do they travel together?
Debrief · institutional research indicators
A balanced set reports activity, quality, people, culture and relevance, not counts alone
Category
Indicator
External reference
Activity
Publications per faculty member, adjusted for retractions
NIRF 2025, Publications (35 marks)
Quality
Citations per faculty; share in the top 25 percent cited; share of outputs with internal peer review before submission
NIRF 2025, Quality of Publications (35 marks); institutional
Innovation and resources
Patents granted and licensed; research and consultancy income; seed grants that led to an external proposal within two years
NIRF 2025, IPR (15) and FPPP (15); NAAC Criterion III
People
PhD graduates and median time to completion; share of early-career faculty with a reviewed mentoring plan; share of faculty active in research over three years