The University Grants Commission on Thursday removed over 4,000 journals from its approved list. These include titles from Oxford University, Harvard University, the National Council of Educational Research and Training, the Indian Council of Historical Research, Banaras Hindu University, as well as the online version of the Economic and Political Weekly.

This comes as a huge blow to professors whose works have been published in these journals. Their publications in these journals will no longer be taken into consideration in determining the academic performance indicator score.

The journals were removed after they were found to be “of poor quality”, providing “incorrect/insufficient information” about themselves or for making “false claims”, the UGC said. Of the 4,305 titles removed from the list, 1,447 were classified as social science journals, 1,120 as arts and humanities journals and the rest as science. The commission added that it would review 191 more journals.