Lucknow University picks up research pace by 60% during corona lockdown

TNN | Updated: Apr 8, 2020, 06:59 IST

Lucknow university

LUCKNOW: Some cheer in time of gloom. The lockdown has snapped the laggard tag on Lucknow University at least in research departments, which witnessed a dramatic 60% rise in productivity in last 10 days — March 25-April 5.
The LU faculty took this opportunity to complete 60 research papers, pending for months due to a busy academic calendar. This works out to an average of six papers per day. A five-year number crunching shows only one paper was completed every day. Many papers completed during lockdown were sent to international journals for publication.
The completed research papers include 50 of the science faculty, four each of arts and commerce and one each of education and law faculties. The physics department wore the crown with 22 finished papers, followed by zoology (15).
“Earlier, papers sent to international journals including Springer, Elsevier, Nature, Royal Society of Chemistry and Cambridge, were sent back to professors for review. We utilised this time to revise and send it back to journals, which accepted and published them,” said head physics department, Prof Poonam Tandon.
Some teachers utilised free time to draft papers on wound-up research projects, but not penned down because of busy schedule. Now, they have sent these papers for publication, said head political science, Prof Shashi Shukla. Teachers who accelerated research process are Prof Poonam Tandon (physics) with 12 papers, Prof Monisha Banerjee and Geetanjali Mishra (zoology) four each and Prof Rajiv Manohar (physics) with three papers.
The faculty also used the time to complete or edit at least 10 books. Prof Ashutosh Shukla (botany) edited four books, Prof Ruby Yadav (zoology) two, Prof Shashi Shukla (political science) revised two books while Prof Amarjeet Yadav (yogic science) completed writing two books.
LU VC Prof Alok Kumar Rai said, “Our teachers are utilising the lockdown period in the best possible way. The actual output in research could be more than statistics available now.”