Scheme of Grant-in-Aid for Professional Associations/ Organisations of Social Scientists including Universities, Colleges and Research Institutes for Publication/ Running of their Research Journal(s)(RESEARCH JOURNAL GRANT)

Overview

About RESEARCH JOURNAL GRANT

The applicant under this scheme is a publisher, not a student and not an author. A university department that brings out a quarterly, a college with a journal in a regional language, a national association of sociologists, a research institute with an interdisciplinary title: these are the bodies the Indian Council of Social Science Research pays here, up to Rs 5,00,000 a year for one journal. Everything about the file follows from that, including why audited accounts matter more than academic reputation and why an irregular journal is the hardest case to argue.

ICSSR, which sits under the Ministry of Education, states the objective as helping professional organisations of social scientists, universities, colleges and research institutes improve the quality of their journals and ensure those journals come out on schedule (ICSSR journal grant guidelines). Regularity is what the money is meant to buy, and it is simultaneously a gate: an irregular journal is the one profile the scheme record rules out, and the committee counts issues published per year before it fixes an amount. A title that has already slipped its schedule is arguing uphill on the same fact twice.

The file is handled by the Publication and Research Survey Division, which runs three separate grant lines: a subsidy for publishing manuscripts, a development grant for associations, and this one for journals (ICSSR research survey and publication). Confusing them is the most common way an application arrives at the wrong desk.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

There is no fixed annual date to diarise. The guidelines say applications may be invited through advertisement twice a year, tentatively in the months of May to June and December to January (ICSSR journal grant guidelines). The clause names only that advertised route, which is worth noting because the division's manuscript grant clause explicitly adds a rolling alternative and this one does not (ICSSR publication grant guidelines).

The advertised date is also the one that binds, and it does not stay inside the tentative window. The published call for the journal grant set August 13, 2025 as the last date for submitting the online form (ICSSR call for journal grant applications 2025), which is a month and a half outside the May to June slot. So the operative deadline lives on the announcements listing rather than in the guidelines (ICSSR announcements), and an organisation that reads only the guidelines will be planning for a window that did not open.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The publisher can be a university, a university department, a college, a research institute or a professional association of social scientists, and where it is an association ICSSR says it should preferably be functioning at the national level. Two conditions in the guidelines get missed more often than the registration clause everyone reads. The journal must have at least 50 subscribers. And a journal run by independent researchers or individuals rather than by an institution can apply in its own right, provided it is registered with an ISSN, holds a valid TAN or PAN and has a duly constituted editorial board (ICSSR journal grant guidelines).

One bar does not appear on the guidelines page at all. ICSSR's own eligibility FAQ answers the journal line by describing what it supports as a professional journal published by a national level registered association or organisation having standing of not less than five years (ICSSR frequently asked questions). The guidelines set no such minimum anywhere, and their national level wording is a preference rather than a threshold (ICSSR journal grant guidelines), so a young association working only from the guidelines will not see that test coming.

An application filed under the SC/ST category is read narrowly. Only journals primarily devoted to research on SC/ST related issues are considered under that head, so the category is about the journal's subject matter and not about the composition of the applying body.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

One disqualification is stated outright, and it is about the calendar rather than the scholarship: a journal without consistent periodicity is out. Nothing on the guidelines page is headed exclusions, so the rest of what bars an application has to be read out of the clauses that are there. Two of them do most of the barring. A journal that cannot show research based publication following professional practices of peer review, citation and referencing is not the kind of journal the scheme supports at all, and an organisation that cannot lay out annual reports and annual audited accounts for the last three years cannot clear the eligibility clause however good the title is (ICSSR journal grant guidelines).

Publishing through a commercial house is not a disqualification. It is a cap, and a steep one, described under Award and Benefits below.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Renewal is neither automatic nor open ended. The grant is sanctioned on a year to year basis for a period of not more than five years, and a proposal the Advisory Committee of Experts wants to carry past that mark is placed before ICSSR's Research Committee for a further extension decision (ICSSR journal grant guidelines).

Between years, paperwork gates the money rather than merit. Each year's closing instalment is released only once the audited statement of accounts and the utilisation certificate for the entire sanctioned amount have reached ICSSR, which means a journal can have every issue out on schedule and still be waiting on its own accountant.

What you get

Award & benefits

The ceilings are annual and the guidelines phrase them as amounts that shall ordinarily not be exceeded, which makes each one a limit rather than an entitlement.

Two additions sit outside that grid. An organisation of repute wanting to bring out a special issue containing back issues of its journal may be considered for a separate grant for that purpose. And payment arrives in two parts, with 10% of the total held back as the last instalment at the end of the year, released against the audited statement and the utilisation certificate (ICSSR journal grant guidelines).

• Grant up to Rs. 5,00,000 per annum per journal.
• Up to Rs. 8,00,000 for multiple journals by a single organisation.
• Rs. 1,00,000 support for journals with commercial publishers (editorial cost only)with a ceiling of Rs. 2,00,000 if the organisation publishes more than one journal.
• Additional support for publishing back issues or special issues.
• Amount is disbursed in two instalments, first installment is 90% and second will be 10%, which will be released after submitting Audited Statement of Accounts and Utilisation Certificate

What to prepare

Documents required

The binding list is the annexure set attached to the prescribed application form, and it is heavier on the organisation's finances than on the journal's scholarship.

Read the eligibility clause and the annexure list together before assembling the file. Eligibility asks the association to submit its annual report and annual audited accounts for the last three years, while Annexure IV asks for audited accounts covering the last two (ICSSR journal grant guidelines). The safer file carries three years of both.

Step by step

How to apply

The application runs on two tracks at once, and skipping either one leaves it incomplete. An online application is submitted first, then a hard copy of the same form, duly forwarded by the affiliating institution and carrying the supporting documents, is posted to the Publication and Research Survey Division, Indian Council of Social Science Research, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, JNU Institutional Area, New Delhi 110067 (ICSSR journal grant guidelines). The 2025 call specified the online route as ICSSR's applicant portal and repeated the parcel instruction, addressed to the In-charge of the division, with five copies of the latest published journal enclosed (ICSSR call for journal grant applications 2025).

Tracking happens from the same login that carried the submission. ICSSR's application dashboard holds the applicant login for grants and a separate grievance portal, and it publishes the two escalation routes plainly: the Computer Centre at cc@icssr.org for anything technical about the portal, and the divisional in-charge for everything about the scheme itself (ICSSR application dashboard). For this grant, the divisional address published with the call was journalsgrantsprs@gmail.com (ICSSR call for journal grant applications 2025).

Payment status is a separate question from application status. Because the final tranche is held against the utilisation certificate and the audited statement, a sanctioned journal whose closing instalment has not arrived is usually looking at a documents problem with the division rather than anything visible on the portal (ICSSR journal grant guidelines).

How winners are picked

Selection process

Each proposal is evaluated by an Advisory Committee of the Publication and Research Survey Division, whose experts examine the journal's academic viability, objectives and suitability for publication, and the applying organisation's academic viability, objectives and contribution to social science. The committee's recommendation is then communicated to the Council for approval (ICSSR journal grant guidelines). No score sheet or weightage table is published.

What the committee weighs when fixing the actual amount is published, and it tells an applicant more than the eligibility list does. It examines the journal's subscription income against its publication expenditure and the estimated cost of improving quality, then looks at the number of issues brought out each year, the number of pages, whether an electronic version exists, the refereeing procedure being followed, the journal's own website, and its indexation in India and abroad (ICSSR journal grant guidelines). A journal with a live site, an online edition and a documented referee process is arguing for a higher figure, not merely for approval.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The grant is tied to a single use. ICSSR states that money given for running a journal is to be utilised only for publication of that journal and not for any other cause or purpose of the association or organisation (ICSSR journal grant guidelines). Diverting it to a conference, a library purchase or office running costs falls outside the sanction, and those heads belong to a different ICSSR line.

One condition attaches to the journal rather than to the accounts: it has to be made available at concessional prices to universities and colleges, and to university and college teachers and research scholars (ICSSR journal grant guidelines). The ad hoc, year to year character of the sanction and the withheld closing instalment described above are the other two standing conditions.

Get help

Contact

The scheme belongs to the Publication and Research Survey Division, whose published email is prsdivision@icssr.org and whose telephone numbers are +919220521105 and +91-11-49979741 (ICSSR divisions and officials). Queries about the journal grant call itself were routed to journalsgrantsprs@gmail.com, with portal problems to cc@icssr.org (ICSSR call for journal grant applications 2025).

Headquarters is a fallback rather than a first stop for this grant. ICSSR publishes an exchange on +91-11-26741849 and opens its Aruna Asaf Ali Marg premises to visitors for a single hour, 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM (ICSSR contact page), but the parcel with five copies of the journal in it is addressed to the division, not to that counter.

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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