The Department of Health Research under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, released the draft National Health Research Policy (NHRP) on July 6, 2026 [1], inviting public responses so that valuable suggestions may be incorporated to evolve a comprehensive policy. This public policy formulation exercise had caught our attention, prompting us to review the draft from the perspective of novice researchers, those with only a handful of current matrices and hardly any research impact to boast about.
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