UGC to award 10 ‘PhD Excellence Citations’ for ‘outstanding doctoral research’

At a meeting held last week, the UGC has approved guidelines for these citations, and the guidelines are set to be made public soon to obtain feedback.

As per the guidelines, universities may nominate up to five theses in a year, one from each of the five disciplines. The selection process will involve two steps – a screening committee at the university level which will shortlist candidates, and five selection committees constituted by the UGC for each of the five streams to select two awardees from each stream.

Universities will be required to consider criteria like the originality of the thesis, methodology, clarity and structure, impact, presentation, defense of the thesis, and contribution to the existing body of knowledge in the discipline.

The UGC will invite nominations from universities via an application portal in January, and the winners are likely to be awarded with their citations on September 5 every year.

According to the UGC, the guidelines for the citations were framed with insights from a study conducted by it on the PhDs awarded from 2011 to 2018. Over this period, 30% of the PhDs awarded were in science, followed by 26% in Engineering and Technology, 12% in Social Sciences, 6% in Indian Languages, 6% in Management, and 5% each in Medical Sciences and Education. The number of PhD admissions grew from 77,798 in 2010-11 to 1,61,412 in 2017-18, going by data provided by the UGC.