In a circular, to all Vice-Chancellors of universities and principals of colleges here, commission's secretary Rajnish Jain pointed out that the UGC in its incessant endeavour to ensure quality and excellence in higher education has taken the initiative of 'quality mandate', which emphasizes the importance of promoting high-quality research and creating new knowledge by faculty members.

"In this regard, UGC established a consortium of Academic Research and Ethics (CARE) a step towards enhancing research capacity, nurturing research culture and promoting academic and research integrity as well as publication ethics in the universities and colleges," he said.

He said taking forward this initiative, UGC has now come out with a book on "Academic Integrity and Research Quality" which comprises l6 well-researched articles covering the basic parameters of ethics, publishing codes, and principles of research across diverse disciplines.

"It is available as an e-book on the UGC portal," he said and urged all the universities and colleges to take appropriate measures to adopt academic research practices for the community of researchers to improve the quality of research and academic integrity as well as publication ethics mentioned in the book".

In addition, the UGC secretary also said that in view of the importance given to the concept of- Global Citizenship and Global Citizenship Education (GCED) in National Education Policy, the UGC has developed an "Educational Framework for Global Citizenship in Higher Education" which would provide conceptual clarity on how HEIs can integrate the concept of Global Citizenship amongst the students through teaching, pedagogy and research.

"The framework also provides inputs on the expectations, knowledge, skills and value system required by students to become global citizens and the GCED framework is available as an E-book on the UGC website," he said and asked all the universities and colleges to also adopt GCED framework and to integrate the concept of Global Citizenship among their learners.