Research Highlights & Policy

Reputation of any educational institution depends on scholarship, research productivity and Innovation. The success of a University in attaining its objectives is greatly contingent upon the alignment of the faculty with all the aspects of research initiatives, being undertaken at the university. Therefore, the present research policy aims to help D Y Patil, Deemed to be University and faculty achieve excellence and contribute to organizations and society.

The University believes that researchers are free to choose the subject of their research, to seek Support from any funding source for their research work, and to report their findings and conclusions. However, research shall be available for scrutiny to the University and constructive criticism of peers. Research techniques used by the researchers shall not violate established professional ethics, pertaining to the health, safety, privacy, and other personal rights of human beings or to the infliction of injury or pain on animals.
The University shall create conducive environment for research. Due to limited resources, the University may not support fully all research likely to be undertaken, but it shall allocate the space, facilities, partial funding, and other resources for research programmes based on the scholarly and educational merits of the proposed research. It shall also provide development opportunities to researchers for writing research proposals and reports, publications, patent filing, etc.

Teaching and research are equally important in a university. On the establishment of the University, it was thought that to promote creativity among the undergraduate and post-graduate students, some research component in the curricula, especially in the final or pre-final year of the bachelors programme and final year in the master’s programme, is necessary. Accordingly, in the pre-final final year of the bachelors programme the Minor Research Project and Major Research Project are inducted where the students under the guidance of the faculty work on the decided topic of the dissertation and submit the findings periodically. The final project is submitted to the institution and also the viva is conducted. Similarly, in the postgraduate programme, research was emphasized emphatically and students were trained for robust research skills. The University shall further reinforce research training in both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the future.

Students have many ideas on which they want to work, but in the absence of the infrastructure, including the place and space, they are unable to work on them. Therefore, the University would encourage an Idea Lab in each institution and in due course of time at the University level, where the students can research on an idea. The Idea Lab also provides the opportunity to the students to ask questions in different areas of knowledge. It shall equip them with an ability to think, concretize the idea, design research study, work on it and report the findings. It shall also encourage research scholars to publish and patent their research work.

From the very beginning, the University encouraged young faculty to conduct research. Thus, it has developed a scheme for providing financial assistance to Minor Research Project. According to this scheme, a faculty member prepares Minor Research Project, which is submitted to a committee at Department/University level and on the recommendations of this committee the University gives financial assistance to the faculty concerned. To have the periodical assessment for all such research projects and with an aim to guide the researcher, the departmental or institutions level committee is constituted. It is also mandatory to send a quarterly progress report of such Minor Research Project to the University. For this purpose, every year the University earmarks financial budget under each institution.
The Minor Research Project Scheme helps young faculty think about research, prepare the proposal, conduct research and write a research report. It also assists them in preparing proposals for major research projects. The University shall continue to encourage young faculty to take up minor research projects and shall earmark appropriate budget for this purpose.

The University has identified a various funding agencies. Faculty can submit Major Research Project proposals to these agencies. These proposals are scrutinized before submitting the same to a funding agency. The University provides all kinds of infrastructure facilities available for conducting a Major Research Project.
The University plans to evolve a mechanism through which it shall monitor the progress of Major Research Projects funded by an external agency, maintain its accounts and submit the utilizing certificate in time to the funding agency as per the requirement of the funding agency.
The University shall provide funding on its own to certain important Major Research Projects where the funding from the outside agency is not possible. It shall earmark appropriate budget for this purpose.

We live in a global village. Knowledge is being produced in the different parts of the world. Collaborative international research is essential to facilitate mutual learning and expertise sharing. The University plans to have the MoUs with prominent research institutions abroad, for conducting research jointly in the areas of common interest. For this purpose, a Task Force shall be constituted that will constantly explore the possibilities of having such collaborative or joint research in terms of thrust areas, decide the modus operandi of conducting such research and attend to other relevant aspects.

Generally, faculty are eager to conduct research, but because of the lack of expertise to write a research proposal or having insufficient research skills, they are unable to channelize their efforts effectively. Hence, in many cases, a research proposal is rejected by a funding agency. Even for publication of papers because of the lack of knowledge about how to write a paper and under which format it should be submitted, sometimes the papers are not accepted. Therefore, the University shall organize rigorous training programmes for researchers in the identified areas.

Publication of papers is critical for the effectiveness of the University. Faculty must publish continuously in quality journals. Therefore, the University plans to encourage the publication of papers by the faculty with a targeted aim. A faculty member shall be expected to publish a certain number of research papers in refereed journals at national and international levels. These journals shall be identified by respective institutes.
Research papers to be published in identified journals and to be presented at national and international conferences shall be scrutinized and guided by a committee of senior professors.
Each institution shall be encouraged to publish a quality journal and organize research conference, from time to time to boost research activities in the Institute and to contribute to the existing body of knowledge.

The University would like to create an environment for each department and an institution where they work in a specific research area and be known as a specialist organization. This will conduce to focus on specific research activities in the specialized areas. Through these efforts, the University shall promote a particular department or an institution as the Centre of Excellence in due course for a specialized thrust area.

The University shall create research chairs and a scheme for appointment of Professor Emeritus for a particular term, where very senior scientists or professors shall be appointed for chairs and they shall conduct research on an important topic. The research chair professors shall take some teaching load in line with the principle of integrating the research and teaching.

To promote, monitor and incentivize research, the University shall have an exclusive and dedicated Directorate of Research, led by a senior academician. The Directorate shall take care of day-to-day monitoring of all above activities, generating ideas about the conduct of research in different areas, implementing the ideas, meeting the requirement of funding, monitoring the activities and assessing the outcomes constantly and periodically.
Therefore, the Directorate of Research shall be an essential component for any research endeavor. The Directorate shall have the functions to disseminate the findings of research to the society and also to integrate the research with teaching.

This idea a Research Park is a relatively recent one where collaborative research can be conducted. Under this scheme, the infrastructure and ambience are created in the concerned field for conducting research where the University and the industries invest money and the experts working in the industry and the University can work together and find solutions to the problems of industry or create new knowledge which ultimately will benefit the society. In the Park, the research can be conducted jointly by different institutions of the University.

The University believes that the occurrence of misconduct is a threat to the basic principles of research. The University defines research misconduct, as any fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in proposing, performing or reviewing research or in the reporting of research results. Research misconduct does not include an honest error or differences of opinion, authorship disputes that do not involve plagiarism, and violations of other University policies (e.g., sexual harassment policy). Misconduct in research damages the integrity of the profession and undermines the credibility of scholars. It is also antithetical to the values the University strives to maintain and promote.
The University shall take seriously all allegations of misconduct, and shall ensure that the procedures for the inquiry, investigation and adjudication of any misconduct are well defined and just for all parties involved.

The policy will be reviewed after a period of three years.