Students Can Now Access 1.35 Lakh Thesis through Shodhganga Online Repository

In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey informed that according to the UGC Regulation 2016 it is mandatory to submit an electronic copy of the dissertation. The regulation is regarding the minimum standards and procedure for awarding M.Phil./ Ph.D. degrees.

The regulation states that the e-copy will be submitted by the institute after the evaluation process is over and before awarding the degrees. These copies of the dissertation will be submitted to the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET). A repository named ‘Shodhganga’ has been set up by INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar, to facilitate this collection of data.

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Following were the objectives behind establishing Shodhganga:

• To have a national repository for collecting e-copies of thesis and dissertations that provides an intuitive interface to browse, download and manage the data online.
• To eradicate duplication and redundancy in order to prevent the wastage of both financial as well as human resources.
• To introduce a platform for accessing Indian thesis and dissertations for the benefit of students studying across the country. Another aim was to present the research work of Indian students at a global level
• To provide plagiarism detection software and enable universities to access it.
• To assess the performance of fund eligible Universities (that function under the guidance of UGC) and digitise them.
• To maintain a list of defaulters and black lists of thesis submitted to their universities.

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Universities can submit their thesis to Shodhganga online as well as offline. Students can search thesis using basic, advanced and subject-wise browsing in this repository. Close to 1,35,942 thesis have been submitted so far via Shodhganga. INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar has reported that neither of the universities has shown any reluctance to join the scheme.