NEW DELHI: The University Grants Commission (UGC) is set to award ten ‘PhD Excellence Citations’ every year, in an effort to recognise “high quality PhD work among young research scholars.”
The citations will be given from next year onwards, and they are set to recognize “outstanding doctoral research,” according to UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar.
They will be awarded for theses across five disciplines – Sciences including Agricultural Sciences and Medical Sciences; Engineering and Technology; Social Sciences including Education and Humanities; Indian Languages; Commerce and Management.
Research scholars who have obtained PhD degrees through a convocation from January 1 to December 31 in a year will be eligible for the citation in the following year. Those who have obtained their PhDs from state, central, private, and deemed to be universities are eligible for the citation.
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.
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