Research Funding, Faculty Performance and Institutional Quality in Indian Arts and Science Colleges: An Evidence-Based Study of IKS, ICSSR and Other Grants

Abstract

External research grants from the Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) Division, the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and other agencies are increasingly treated as markers of faculty quality in Indian arts and science colleges. Yet it remains unclear whether such grants improve what faculty actually do, or mainly improve how visibly their work is recorded. This article develops an evidence-based framework for answering that question. It asks to what extent IKS, ICSSR and other grants improve faculty performance, and how accurately and fairly the resulting contributions are represented in research profiles, annual faculty appraisal and institutional quality assessment. Drawing on fifteen recent studies of research funding, research evaluation and research information systems (2022–2025), the article argues that the international evidence on grant effects is mixed once selection bias is controlled, and that documentation systems such as VIDWAN, IRINS, ORCID and Google Scholar record visibility rather than quality. It proposes a mixed-method, longitudinal comparative design covering 30–40 government, aided and self-financing colleges, comparing funded faculty with comparable unsuccessful applicants over three years before and up to three years after the grant. A key safeguard is to analyse performance after removing the appraisal points awarded merely for receiving a grant. The article also offers a discipline-sensitive contribution map, a verified project register and an illustrative 100-point research-contribution rubric for validation, together with a versioned mapping of eligible outcomes to NAAC and NIRF requirements.

Introduction

The text is a research framework paper examining whether research funding improves faculty performance in India’s arts and science colleges and whether existing appraisal, accreditation, and research-profile systems represent that performance fairly.

1. Background

Arts and science colleges educate a large proportion of India’s undergraduate students but often have less access to research funding and recognition than universities and major research institutes. Existing evaluation systems frequently emphasize grants, publications, and citations, measures that may not adequately capture humanities and college-based work such as critical editions, translations, oral histories, field studies, community research, or regional-language scholarship.

Recent developments such as NEP 2020, IKS funding, ICSSR programmes, NAAC accreditation, and NIRF rankings have increased the importance of research activity in colleges. However, research capacity and funding remain uneven across institutions and disciplines.

2. Central problem

The paper identifies an important measurement problem: receiving a grant may improve actual research performance, but it may also simply make existing work more visible.

For example, a funded faculty member may update their VIDWAN, ORCID, IRINS, or institutional profile, report outputs to IQAC, and receive appraisal points for obtaining funding. Therefore, a higher appraisal score after receiving a grant does not necessarily prove that the grant caused better performance.

The study therefore separates two questions:

• Does research funding actually improve faculty performance? would compare funded and comparable non-funded faculty, examine the influence of grant size and institutional support, assess effects on teaching and student research, evaluate the accuracy of digital profiles, and develop a more discipline

• Do institutional systems accurately and fairly document and recognize that performance?

3. Evidence from previous research

The literature review suggests that the relationship between funding and research performance is complex rather than automatically positive.

• Some rigorous studies find little or uncertain causal improvement in publication output after funding.

• Other studies find positive long-term effects, but these may partly reflect the fact that stronger researchers are more likely to receive grants.

• Funding can also produce indirect benefits through students, research assistants, and collaborators.

• The effects of funding differ substantially across disciplines.

• Humanities research is often less dependent on grants and may produce valuable outputs that are poorly represented by citation-based databases.

The literature also indicates that what institutions measure influences academic behaviour. Heavy reliance on publication counts, grants, and citations can encourage researchers to optimize these indicators rather than broader forms of academic contribution.

4. Research gap

The paper identifies four major gaps:

1. Little research examines the causal effects of grants specifically in Indian arts and science colleges.

2. Existing studies focus heavily on publications and citations while overlooking teaching enrichment, student mentoring, and community contributions.

3. Few studies distinguish genuine performance improvement from better documentation of existing achievements.

4. There is no sufficiently developed framework connecting funded-project outcomes with the actual NAAC and NIRF assessment requirements faced by colleges.

5. Research question and objectives

The central research question is:

To what extent do IKS, ICSSR, and other research grants improve faculty performance, and how accurately and fairly are those contributions represented in research profiles, faculty appraisal, and institutional quality assessment?

The proposed study would compare funded and comparable non-funded faculty, examine the influence of grant size and institutional support, assess effects on teaching and student research, evaluate the accuracy of digital profiles, and develop a more discipline-sensitive appraisal framework.

6. Conceptual framework

The proposed model follows this sequence:

Grant Inputs → Research Activities → Verified Outputs → Teaching/Mentoring/Community Uses → Documentation → Institutional Recognition

A key principle is that performance improvement and documentation should be measured separately. Better documentation should not automatically be interpreted as better performance.

7. Discipline-sensitive evaluation

The paper argues primarily provides publication and citation visibility. NAAC and NIRF assess should measure the effects of funding while avoiding circular measurement and unfair that different disciplines require different measures of contribution.

• Humanities: books, critical editions, translations, archives, oral histories, digital collections, and teaching resources.

• Commerce, Management, and Social Sciences: field studies, policy briefs, community interventions, entrepreneurship research, and stakeholder adoption.

• Computer Science, Mathematics, and Natural Sciences: research papers, software, datasets, models, laboratory methods, and prototypes.

• Interdisciplinary research: collaborative publications, digital humanities, environmental studies, student research, and documentation of community knowledge.

Thus, a single publication- or citation-based metric should not be assumed to represent performance equally across all departments.

8. Role of research-information systems

The paper distinguishes between systems such as VIDWAN, IRINS, ORCID, Google Scholar, NAAC, and NIRF. Each serves a different purpose, and their information should not automatically be treated as equivalent performance evidence.

For example, ORCID records research identity and activities, while Google Scholar primarily provides publication and citation visibility. NAAC and NIRF assess institutional performance according to their respective frameworks.

The paper also warns that incomplete digital profiles, particularly in some humanities and regional-language disciplines, should not automatically be interpreted as low research productivity.

Conclusion

External grants from IKS, ICSSR and other agencies can expand what college faculty are able to do, but the systems that record and reward that work do not currently show whether performance has improved or merely become more visible. This article has argued, on the basis of recent international and Indian evidence, that the two must be measured separately. It has proposed a mixed-method longitudinal design that compares funded faculty with comparable unsuccessful applicants, analyses performance after removing grant-receipt points, treats teaching, mentoring and community benefit as outcomes in their own right, and audits the completeness of VIDWAN, IRINS, ORCID and Google Scholar records against a verified institutional register. It has also offered a discipline-sensitive contribution map, a versioned mapping to NAAC and NIRF, and an illustrative 100-point rubric for validation. If implemented, the study would give colleges a defensible basis for appraisal, give funders evidence on what small grants achieve outside elite institutions, and give accreditation and ranking bodies a clearer view of scholarship that journal-centred indicators miss. The underlying principle is simple: credit should follow verified contribution, not the sanction letter or the profile page.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Dr. M. Vijayakumar, S. Mahendran, S. Priyadharshini, Dr. V. C. Srinivasan. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.