The UGC plagiarism regulations 2018 are the rules every Indian university applies when a master's or research thesis, a dissertation or a staff publication is checked for copied text. They grade similarity into four levels, from Level 0 (up to 10%, no penalty) to Level 3 (above 60%, registration cancelled), and they name no referencing style. EdCitation publishes this guide; its tools look references up in the publisher's record, and the writing is always yours.
We read the Gazette text on the UGC's site on 2 October 2026, with later UGC rules, INFLIBNET's pages and five Indian referencing guides. Our guide to citation in Indian universities covers other handbooks and Indian names; this one stays with the regulation. The last section gives what EdCitation's Verify references and Cite a source returned on Indian sources, and what Check plagiarism does before your university's check.
What are the UGC plagiarism regulations 2018?
They are the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018. The UGC's notification is dated 23 July 2018, and the Gazette of India printed them as No. 287 on 31 July 2018. Under clause 1 they bind the students, faculty, researchers and staff of every higher educational institution (HEI) in India (University Grants Commission, 2018).
Clause 2 defines plagiarism as taking someone else's work or idea and "passing them as one's own", and common knowledge as a fact or figure known to most people. A "script" is a research paper, thesis, dissertation, book chapter or book submitted for a master's or research degree or for publication; assignments, term papers, project reports, course work, essays and answer scripts are expressly left out.
Do the regulations apply to undergraduates?
Their penalties do not, since an undergraduate essay or project report is not a script. But clause 5(c)(i) makes the "cardinal principles of academic integrity" a compulsory course or module in undergraduate and postgraduate curricula, and clause 6(e) requires every HEI to adopt its own plagiarism policy and post it on its home page. That policy governs a BA essay. IIT Bombay's guidelines cover BTech reports too, and their specimen declaration has the student state that others' ideas and words are "adequately cited and referenced" (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, 2009).
What are the plagiarism levels in the UGC regulations?
Clause 8 sets four levels by percentage of similarity, and clause 12 gives each a penalty, for theses (12.1) and for publications (12.2). Quoted phrases are the Gazette's own.
| Level (clause 8) | Similarity | Thesis or dissertation (12.1) | Publication (12.2) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 0 | Up to 10% | "Minor similarities, no penalty" | No penalty |
| Level 1 | Above 10% to 40% | A revised script within a period "not exceeding 6 months" | Withdraw the manuscript |
| Level 2 | Above 40% to 60% | "Debarred from submitting a revised script" for one year | Withdraw; one annual increment denied; no new master's, MPhil or PhD scholar for two years |
| Level 3 | Above 60% | Registration "for that programme shall be cancelled" | Withdraw; two successive increments denied; no new scholar for three years |
| Repeat offence (Note 1) | Any | One level higher | One level higher; a repeated Level 3 brings action "including suspension/termination" |
Plagiarism proved after the award puts the degree "in abeyance" (12.1, Note 2). No penalty may be imposed until misconduct is "established without doubt" and every avenue of appeal is exhausted (clause 12).
The tables say nothing about intent, so an accidental match is graded like a deliberate one. In a 2023 survey of 151 Indian PhD students, 75.5% said they knew the regulations, yet 57% of those had not read the full text (Awasthi et al., 2024). The Gazette text is short; read it whole.
What does the similarity count leave out?
Clause 7 removes three things: quoted work that carries the needed permission or attribution; the front and back matter (reference list, bibliography, table of contents, preface, acknowledgements); and generic terms, laws, standard symbols and equations. A quotation without its attribution stays in the figure.
A note under clause 7 holds the core of the work to a stricter rule. The abstract, summary, hypothesis, observations, results, conclusions and recommendations "shall not have any similarities", apart from common knowledge or coincidental strings of up to fourteen consecutive words. A thesis at 8% overall, with most of it in the results chapter, can still breach the note.
Is 10% similarity allowed in a PhD thesis?
Up to 10% is Level 0, so a similarity index of 10% or less is the UGC's own ceiling. But the note on core sections holds at any percentage. Your university's policy may be stricter; our guide to Indian universities' handbooks gives one that caps any single source at 3%. And the figure is not a verdict: Kadam (2018) welcomed the regulations but warned that 10% from one source can be serious plagiarism, and that a paraphrase without its citation can escape a similarity check. Our guide to what similarity percentage is acceptable sets India beside other countries.
Who decides a plagiarism case in an Indian university?
Two panels, under clauses 9 to 11:
- Anyone with "appropriate proof" reports to the Departmental Academic Integrity Panel (DAIP); cases the HEI opens itself, or from an examiner's findings, go to the institutional panel.
- The DAIP, chaired by the head of department, with an outside academic and a person "well versed with anti plagiarism tools", assesses the level and recommends a penalty within 45 days.
- The Institutional Academic Integrity Panel (IAIP), chaired by a pro-vice-chancellor, dean or senior academic, may revise that recommendation "with due justification" and reports to the head of the HEI within 45 days.
- The person accused receives a copy of the IAIP's report.
What do you sign when you submit a thesis?
Two papers, under clause 6. The student's undertaking states that the thesis is their original work, free of plagiarism, and "duly checked through a Plagiarism detection tool approved by the HEI". The supervisor certifies that the work is plagiarism free.
The PhD Regulations 2022 repeat both papers in clause 11(4) and require "well-developed software applications" to detect plagiarism in clause 11(3). Clause 9(1) puts a "Research and Publication Ethics" course inside the minimum 12 credits of PhD coursework (University Grants Commission, 2022).
The UGC names no product; INFLIBNET has supplied DrillBit-Extreme under its ShodhShuddhi programme since 1 October 2023, to 1,196 or more member institutions by 10 June 2026 (INFLIBNET Centre, n.d.-b). Your undertaking refers to your university's approved tool.
What has the UGC added since 2018?
A public notice on self-plagiarism, dated 20 April 2020. Reproducing your own published work without adequate citation, and presenting it as new, is "text-recycling" and not acceptable (University Grants Commission, 2020). The notice names five forms: republishing a paper, publishing excerpts of a longer work, reusing published data, splitting one study into several papers, and paraphrasing your earlier work, each "without due and full citation". Self-citations, it adds, raise no citation index or h-index.
We did not find the parameters it promised for judging text recycling, nor any amendment to the 2018 levels. Our guide to self-plagiarism shows how to cite your own earlier work.
How does a thesis reach Shodhganga?
Through your university. Clause 6(g) requires each HEI to send INFLIBNET soft copies of its master's and research dissertations and theses no later than a month after each award, to be hosted in the "Shodh Ganga e-repository". For a PhD, clause 17 of the 2022 regulations moves the deposit before the award is announced.
INFLIBNET's sites refused our connection on 2 October 2026, so we read its Shodhganga brochure in an archived copy of 16 May 2026 (INFLIBNET Centre, n.d.-a). On thesis submission it says:
- A university signs a memorandum of understanding with INFLIBNET, makes deposit part of its PhD ordinance and names a University Coordinator.
- The coordinator uploads each thesis chapter by chapter; INFLIBNET staff check it for completeness, then publish it.
- On 30 April 2024 it held 5.31 lakh theses from 770 universities, under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence unless stated otherwise.
To cite one, see how to cite a dissertation or thesis.
Which referencing style do Indian universities ask for?
Whichever the department sets. The regulations ask for attribution suited to "the needs and specificities of disciplines" (clause 5(a)) and for training in "reference management tools", but name no style. Five guides not in our earlier India guide:
| University or library | What it asks for | Source |
|---|---|---|
| IIT Bombay, PhD to BTech | One standard journal's style in the subject: IEEE in Electrical Engineering, Materials Transactions in Metallurgical Engineering; every author named | Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (2009) |
| JNU, School of International Studies | A house author-year style, (Miliband 1977), a "References" list, web sources marked "[Online: web] Accessed" | Jawaharlal Nehru University (2006) |
| JNU, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies | APA, "the style most commonly used" in linguistics | Kidwai (2012) |
| NISER Central Library | Eighteen styles by discipline, AAA to Vancouver; no rule stated | National Institute of Science Education and Research (n.d.) |
| IIM Bangalore Library | APA, MLA, Harvard and Chicago; business databases cited in APA | IIM Bangalore Library (2025) |
| Checking any of these lists | Verify references, free | EdCitation |
The JNU and IIT Bombay sites refused our connection, so we read archived copies. EdCitation's Cite a source builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver. For JNU's house style, start from Harvard and adjust the punctuation by hand; for IIT Bombay, restore any authors cut to "et al.".
How do you prepare a thesis for the UGC check?
- Read your university's plagiarism policy and your department's handbook: the style, its edition, and any limit stricter than the UGC's.
- Search in EdCitation's Find sources and build each reference from its DOI in Cite a source, checking names and capitals against the article.
- Put every borrowed sentence in quotation marks with its citation.
- Write the abstract, results and conclusions wholly in your own words.
- With Pro, run a chapter through Check plagiarism, then quote and cite each matched passage, or rewrite it.
- Run the whole reference list through Verify references and resolve each "check this" before you hand in.
- Submit for your university's check, sign the undertaking, and keep your drafts.
What did EdCitation return on Indian sources?
For the references in an Indian thesis, EdCitation is the best tool we know, because it looks each source up in the publisher's record and writes nothing from memory, which no chatbot can promise; in these runs it flagged authors out of order and a misdated article. Cite a source and Verify references are free with no account. EdCitation never writes a word of your thesis; every sentence stays yours.
Cite a source on two DOIs
For 10.4103/ijps.ijps_208_18, APA came back correct:
Kadam, D. (2018). Academic integrity and plagiarism: The new regulations in India. Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, 51(2), 109–110. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijps.ijps_208_18
For 10.5005/cods-9-2-iv, a journal editorial that reprints the regulations, APA gave:
Kl, V., & Nb, N. (2017). University grants commission (promotion of academic integrity and prevention of plagiarism in higher educational institutions) regulations, 2018. CODS Journal of Dentistry, 9(2), 0. https://doi.org/10.5005/cods-9-2-iv
Fix three things. The record files the authors' initials as family names; they sign "Vandana KL" and "Nagaveni NB", so write Vandana, K. L., & Nagaveni, N. B. The title is a proper name and keeps its capitals. The page "0" is the record's "0-0"; the PDF runs iv to vi. The editorial also shows why the Gazette comes first: its penalty list drops Level 2's one-year period and gives faculty at Level 3 the two-year supervision bar of Level 2, where clause 12.2 says three years (Vandana & Nagaveni, 2017).
Given the Gazette's address, Cite a source answered "That page could not be read", so write that entry by hand.
Verify references on a short list
We ran these through Verify references:
- Kadam with its DOI: verified, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches."
- Awasthi, Kumar and Tripathi without a DOI: verified, "Title, year and first author match a published record."
- The editorial as its authors sign it: verified.
- Awasthi with Kumar moved first: "check this", "The publisher's record lists Awasthi first, and your entry opens with Kumar. Check the order of the authors."
- Kadam dated 2016: "check this", "A record with this title exists, but it was published in 2018 online and 2019 in its issue, not 2016." Right verdict, dates reversed: the record gives the issue as May 2018 and online as July 2019.
- A reference we made up for the test: not found, "No publisher's or registry's record matches this reference."
- The Gazette at its ugc.gov.in address: verified, "The address opens a PDF whose first pages carry the entry's title."
No entry was left "could not check"; when that happens, EdCitation says so rather than calling the source missing.
What Check plagiarism adds with Pro
Check plagiarism is part of Pro, at $8 a month. Paste the text or choose the file: passages that match published or web text are marked in place, each linked to its source so you can quote and cite it. Only you see the report. It runs on credits (Pro includes 240 a month, Max 720, more from $10), the cost shows before it runs, and a failed check uses nothing. A match is not proof of plagiarism, and the UGC's levels belong to your university's check, so use the report to find what to fix. Pro also brings References from a file; see pricing.
Quick questions
Is 10% similarity allowed in a PhD thesis in India?
Yes, as Level 0: the UGC's 2018 regulations attach no penalty up to 10%. The abstract, results and conclusions must still show no similarity beyond common knowledge or coincidental phrases, and a university may set a lower limit.
Do the UGC plagiarism regulations apply to undergraduate assignments?
No. They exclude assignments, project reports, essays and answer scripts; your university's own policy covers those.
Is self-plagiarism plagiarism under UGC rules?
The UGC's notice of 20 April 2020 calls reusing your published work without full citation "text-recycling" and says it is not acceptable.
Which plagiarism checker does the UGC require?
None by name; your university approves one. EdCitation's Check plagiarism finds matching passages before you submit.
References
- Awasthi, S., Kumar, S., & Tripathi, M. (2024). Plagiarism and text-matching software: Awareness, attitude and knowledge of research students in India. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 20, Article 23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-024-00168-1
- IIM Bangalore Library. (2025, November 19). Citation styles [LibGuide]. Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. https://library.iimb.ac.in/CS
- Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. (2009). Guidelines for preparation of theses/dissertations/reports [PDF, archived]. Academic Office. https://web.archive.org/web/20250220104807/https://acad.iitb.ac.in/files/2024-04/Dissertation17june09-10.pdf
- INFLIBNET Centre. (n.d.-a). Shodhganga: Repository of Indian theses and dissertations [Brochure, archived]. https://web.archive.org/web/20260516012003/https://www.inflibnet.ac.in/downloads/brochure/shodhganga.pdf
- INFLIBNET Centre. (n.d.-b). ShodhShuddhi: Enhancing research quality [Archived]. https://web.archive.org/web/20260610054713/https://shodhshuddhi.inflibnet.ac.in/
- Jawaharlal Nehru University. (2006). Research manual (for MPhil/PhD students) [PDF, archived]. School of International Studies. https://web.archive.org/web/20250123151221/https://www.jnu.ac.in/sites/default/files/SIS_Research_Manual.pdf
- Kadam, D. (2018). Academic integrity and plagiarism: The new regulations in India. Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery, 51(2), 109–110. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijps.ijps_208_18
- Kidwai, A. (2012). The SLL&CS research handbook [PDF, archived]. Jawaharlal Nehru University. https://web.archive.org/web/20251221230908/https://www.jnu.ac.in/sites/default/files/SLLCS%20Research%20Manual.pdf
- National Institute of Science Education and Research. (n.d.). Citation styles. Central Library. https://www.niser.ac.in/library/content/citation-styles
- University Grants Commission. (2018). University Grants Commission (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018 [PDF]. The Gazette of India, No. 287. https://www.ugc.gov.in/pdfnews/7771545_academic-integrity-Regulation2018.pdf
- University Grants Commission. (2020, April 20). Public notice: Self-plagiarism [PDF]. https://www.ugc.gov.in/pdfnews/2284767_self-plagiarism001.pdf
- University Grants Commission. (2022). UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedures for Award of Ph.D. Degree) Regulations, 2022 [PDF]. The Gazette of India. https://www.ugc.gov.in/pdfnews/0909572_Minimum-Standards-and-Procedure-for-Award-of-PhD-Degree.pdf
- Vandana, K. L., & Nagaveni, N. B. (2017). University Grants Commission (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018 [Editorial]. CODS Journal of Dentistry, 9(2), iv–vi. https://doi.org/10.5005/cods-9-2-iv