The UGC CARE list, explained

What the UGC-CARE list was

The full form of UGC-CARE is the UGC Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics. A UGC public notice dated 28 November 2018 set it up. The journal list came out in 2019, and it took the place of the earlier “UGC Approved List of Journals”. People had criticised that older list a lot. A study from Savitribai Phule Pune University said a large share of the journals in it were poor quality or plainly predatory. Later the same university hosted the CARE list.

The CARE list was meant to correct this by curating journals instead of keeping the list open-ended. It had two parts, and many scholars misunderstood them, so be clear that the groups were not a ranking. The UGC-CARE FAQ itself says this in simple words. Group I was not above Group II, or the other way. They were just two routes into the list.

Why it mattered so much

Slowly the list started deciding careers. University PhD ordinances, faculty recruitment and the Academic Performance Indicator scores used for promotions referred to it many times. Because of this a CARE listing was worth a lot of money, and where there is money, misuse also comes.

Clone journals

During the CARE years the main trouble was cloning. A good number of Group I journals were small print journals with almost no presence on the web. Mostly they belonged to a society or a department, and many were published in Indian languages. Copycat operators made websites carrying the very same title and ISSN. After that they charged scholars for “UGC-CARE approved publication”.

The genuine journal had no website at all. So on Google the scholar found the clone first. Scholar pays the “processing fee” to them and one PDF comes on mail, same look as a printed paper. After months somebody verifies, and the real journal never printed it.

It became so common that the UGC-CARE site kept separate cloned-journal lists for Group I and Group II. Group II was also not safe. Hijackers copied Scopus-indexed titles as well. And when Scopus or Web of Science discontinued a journal, that Group II journal dropped out of the list.

What UGC changed in 2025, date by date

1. 3 October 2024: the Commission meets for its 584th meeting. An expert committee advised it, and it decides to discontinue the UGC-CARE listing of journals. It also decides to develop suggestive parameters for selecting peer-reviewed journals.
2. 11 February 2025: a public notice (F.No. 1-1/2018(CARE/JOURNAL)) announces this decision. The notice supersedes the 2018 notice under which UGC-CARE was created. Draft parameters are also published in it, and the public could send feedback till 25 February 2025.
3. 24 June 2025: the Commission looks at the feedback and, in its 591st meeting, approves the final suggestive parameters.
4. 16 July 2025: one more public notice circulates the approved parameters. It publishes a list of 1,474 UGC-CARE listed journals as on 10 February 2025 “for referencing purposes”. As per the notice, a journal being included in that list or left out of it “does not imply validation or endorsement by the Commission.”

Read that last line slowly. Many are reading that old list as if UGC approved it last week. It only show which journals were there in early 2025, and a journal can go down after that. And a good journal missing from it has not been judged bad.

The suggestive parameters

There is no single national list any more. UGC instead gives higher education institutions a checklist of parameters, arranged in eight groups. It suggests internal committees to adapt it for their own subjects. The table gives a short version.

Cite this data: PhD Desk, “The UGC CARE list, explained”, last reviewed 1 November 2026, https://phddesk.in/guides/ugc-care-list-explained

If you have read our predatory journal checklist, most of this will look familiar. It is the same checks a careful researcher should do anyway, only put in order.

What this means for you as a PhD scholar

Your university’s rules now matter more than UGC’s list

Under the UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of Ph.D. Degree) Regulations, 2022, there is already no national requirement to publish before thesis submission. You can read the details in our guide on whether publication is mandatory for a PhD. Still, many universities kept a publication rule of their own in the PhD ordinance. Many of those ordinances use the words “UGC-CARE listed”.

Now that the list has gone, each university is dealing with it differently. A few go by the archived list. A few accept only Scopus or Web of Science. Some have made their own approved lists with the new parameters, and some have not changed the wording at all. No common approach has come yet, so it depends on your university. Ask your research or PhD cell what they currently accept, and do it before you pick the journal.

If you published in a CARE-listed journal before February 2025

UGC’s notices do not make older papers invalid retrospectively. The journal must really have been on the list when your paper came out, and it must be the genuine journal, not a clone. When both are true for your paper, keep these informations safe with you, like a screenshot or PDF of the listing, the issue details and the journal’s ISSN. But whether a university will accept that paper for some specific purpose is still for the university to decide.

If you are choosing a journal now

For most purposes, the safe choice is a journal you can verify on your own and that your university names directly. Mostly that is a Scopus-indexed or Web of Science-indexed title, or one from your university’s own list. Some fields have good Indian-language or regional journals which these databases don’t cover. For those journals, use the new parameters. Look at the editorial board, the review policy, the archive and the ethics policies yourself.

Are Scopus journals UGC approved?

No, not now. Today no journal is “UGC approved”, whether it is in Scopus or not.

When the CARE list was running, the answer was yes in most cases. According to the UGC-CARE FAQ, every journal indexed in Scopus or Web of Science was part of Group II, and it did not have to apply separately. Even at that time there were exceptions. The same FAQ said journals in the Emerging Sources Citation Index of Web of Science were not in Group II. It also said that if a Scopus journal was removed from the CARE list, a paper in it would not be considered for academic purposes. So “it is in Scopus” and “it is UGC-CARE” were never exactly the same thing.

That link ended with the public notice of 11 February 2025. From that notice onwards there is no CARE listing at all, and UGC gave the suggestive parameters instead of it. The parameters do talk about “indexation in reputed databases” and CiteScore. Still they don’t name Scopus or any other database, and they don’t approve any journal. They are only a checklist for the institutions to use.

Whether a Scopus paper counts for your PhD now depends on your university’s ordinance. Several ordinances we have read mention Scopus by name. In some of them there is a quartile condition also, and some don’t count conference proceedings. Others are still saying “UGC-CARE” and the research cell has to interpret what that means. Our guide on the PhD publication requirement gives a summary of what several universities ask for at present.

Many scholars are getting emails about a “UGC-approved Scopus journal”. The UGC word there means nothing now. Check the Scopus claim yourself with the ISSN, then see what your ordinance says.

How to verify a journal today

Whatever your university’s rule, the basic checks are the same. Do them in this order.

• Take the ISSN from a document, not from a website. The ISSN printed on a physical copy, on the archived UGC-CARE list or on the ISSN Portal is the one to trust. The ISSN shown on a site that sent you an email is not.
• Check that ISSN on the ISSN Portal (portal.issn.org). The title, the country and the publisher should all be what you were expecting.
• Check the indexing yourself. Put the ISSN in Scopus Sources and in the Web of Science Master Journal List. For an open access journal, search DOAJ also.
• Match the website. You should submit through the same URL the database shows (or the one on the publisher’s printed copy). Same title on some other domain is the usual clone pattern.
• Look in the archived UGC-CARE list if your university still mentions it. A journal being there is now only for reference. It is not an endorsement.
• Read the current rule of your own university. Ask the research cell or your guide which journals will count for your PhD. When the paper is needed for submission, get their reply on email.

Our guide on checking Scopus indexing has the Scopus steps in detail. When you see figures like CiteScore and quartiles and want to understand them, read impact factor, quartiles and h-index explained.

Applying the new parameters yourself

UGC’s parameters can be used by you alone, without any committee. Spend about twenty minutes on one journal.

• Read three recent articles. Check they are in scope and properly referenced, and that you would want your name next to them.
• Search for two members of the editorial board on your own. If they are real, their own university page or profile will mostly mention this journal.
• On the journal site look for the review policy and fee details. The archive, claimed publication time and acceptance rate should be given somewhere, and should look believable.

Common misconceptions about the UGC-CARE list

• “There is a UGC CARE list 2026.” No such list is there. Files going around by that name are the archived February 2025 list or unofficial compilations. The official list is only on ugc.gov.in, and it is marked as a reference.
• “Group I is higher quality than Group II.” At no point were the groups a ranking, and the FAQ of UGC-CARE says the same.
• “If a journal’s website shows the UGC-CARE logo, it was listed.” Anyone can copy a logo for free. What proved a listing was the list itself, checked with the ISSN and the website.
• “UGC has banned publishing in formerly listed journals.” It has not. UGC only stopped maintaining the list and asked institutions to judge journals with the parameters.