Shodhganga Thesis Format & Submission — the INFLIBNET guide

What is Shodhganga?

Shodhganga is the national repository, run by INFLIBNET (an inter-university centre of the UGC), where Indian PhD theses are deposited and made openly accessible. Under the UGC regulations on electronic submission of theses, every awarded doctoral thesis must be uploaded here by the awarding university.

"Shodhganga format" refers to how the thesis must be prepared for that deposit — UGC formatting plus a specific split-file structure. For the general doctoral structure see the PhD thesis format guide.

Who must submit — and when

Submission happens after the viva and award of the degree. The candidate prepares the files; the university library completes the actual INFLIBNET deposit on the university's Shodhganga handle. An anti-plagiarism certificate is required alongside.

The chapter-split file structure

This is what catches most students out: besides the complete thesis PDF, Shodhganga wants the thesis split into separate files, numbered in order:

• 01 Title page
• 02 Preliminary pages (certificate, declaration, acknowledgements, abstract, contents, lists)
• 03 Chapter 1 — and one file per chapter thereafter
• … Each subsequent chapter as its own file
• N-1 References / Bibliography
• N Appendices & publications

Formatting requirements

The submission process

1. Finalise the thesisComplete, UGC-formatted thesis after viva corrections.
2. Prepare the filesFull PDF + the numbered chapter-split files.
3. Assemble metadataTitle, author, supervisor, department, keywords, abstract.
4. Attach the certificateAnti-plagiarism / similarity report as required.
5. Hand to the libraryThe university uploads to its Shodhganga (INFLIBNET) handle.

Common reasons submissions get sent back

Embargo and restricted access

Shodhganga is an open-access repository: anyone, anywhere can search, read and download a deposited thesis for free, with no subscription or institutional login. That is the point of it — but it is also why scholars ask whether they can delay publication.

An embargo is the provision for that. During an embargo period the thesis metadata stays visible — title, author, supervisor, department, abstract — while the full text stays restricted until the period ends, after which it opens automatically. Embargoes are granted by the university, not by INFLIBNET, and they are meant for genuine reasons.

When an embargo is normally justified

• A patent application is filed or pending on work described in the thesis
• Chapters are under review at a journal that treats prior public posting as prior publication
• The work involves confidential industrial or sponsored data under an agreement
• There are genuine privacy or ethical constraints on the data

Apply through your university library or research section before the deposit, in writing, with the reason. An embargo requested after the thesis is already live is far harder to arrange. Note that an embargo delays access — it does not exempt you from depositing.

Published chapters, copyright and plagiarism worries

“My chapters are already published as papers — can I still deposit?”

Usually yes, but check each publisher’s policy. Many publishers permit the accepted manuscript (your peer-reviewed text before the publisher’s typesetting) to appear in an institutional or national repository, sometimes after an embargo, while prohibiting the final published PDF. The practical route is to use your own accepted version in the thesis rather than the publisher’s formatted file, and to cite the published paper.

“Will someone plagiarise my thesis once it is public?”

This is the most common anxiety, and open access actually works the other way. A deposited thesis is timestamped, permanently addressed and indexed, which makes it far easier to prove the work is yours. It is also indexed by plagiarism checkers, so anyone copying it is more likely to be caught, not less. Concealment protects nobody; a public, dated record does.

Who holds the copyright?

You do, as the author, unless your university’s regulations say otherwise. Depositing grants the repository a non-exclusive right to store and distribute the work — it does not transfer ownership, and you remain free to publish from it.

The metadata you have to supply

The repository record is built from metadata, and it is what makes your thesis findable in Google Scholar and in Shodhganga’s own search. Weak metadata buries good work. Prepare these before you go to the library:

Spend real thought on the keywords. They are the difference between a thesis that gets cited and one that sits unread — they are how another researcher finds you.

After your thesis goes live

Once the library completes the deposit, your thesis gets a permanent handle URL on your university’s Shodhganga collection. That link is stable, so use it rather than a search result whenever you point to your work.

• Cite it properly in your CV and later papers — author, year, title, “PhD thesis”, university, and the handle URL.
• Add the handle to your ORCID and Google Scholar profiles so the thesis attaches to your research identity.
• Check the record once it is live. Misspelled supervisor names, a wrong department and truncated abstracts are common and the library can correct them.
• Expect to be found. Shodhganga holds well over 600,000 theses from several hundred UGC-recognised universities and is indexed by search engines, so a good abstract and good keywords do real work for you.

Shodhganga FAQ