Hon Bombay High Court says "Accepted Publication" is good as "Published Paper".

Rule 6 of the national medical commission (NMC) dated 22/02/2022 reads like this (Read Complete NMC circular here)

 Should have at least four Research publications (at least two as Associate Professor) [only original papers, metaanalysis, systematic reviews, and case series that are published in journals indexed in Medline, PubMed, Central Science Citation Index, Science Citation Index, Expanded Embase, Scopus, Directory of Open Access Journals (DoAJ) will be considered].

 The implication of this rule was that you had to have your papers published for consideration of various teaching posts in medical colleges. Many times it has happened that many doctors had their papers accepted for publication but they were denied to appear for interviews for various posts because the  rule 6 of the said circular required that the paper must already have been published and not merely accepted.

However in a recent case The Hon Bombay High court ruled in favor of a doctor whose paper has been accepted and was yet to be published. He was declared ineligible for the post of associate professor (cardiology) because one of his paper, though accepted, was not published till the date of interviews.

 The court ruled in his favour and said

 “In our iew, it is only the fitness or worthiness of research paper for its publication, which comes from a decision of it’s acceptance for publication which should determine the issue of eligibility
of the researcher for a particular post or qualification”.

 The essence of this order is that once a paper is accepted for publication by an indexed journal it effectively means that the author is fit and worthy for the concerned post. The fact that the actual publication is yet to occur is not important. According to Hon Bombay high court the fact that the paper is accepted for publication is good enough for consideration of relevant post. The candidate can not be denied promotions or appointments for need of actual publications.

 Our law expert’s opinion.

Since the High courts are constitutional courts any decision taken by any Hon High court is binding on all stakeholders and all similarly placed candidates will get the same relief. After this judgement of Hon Bombay High court accepted papers will be as good as published papers for the sake of appointments and promotions. If accepted papers are not taken into consideration by relevant authorities, then this judgement can be cited.