This year, the University Grants Commission (UGC), India’s regulating body for higher education, is all set to launch the PhD Excellence Citations from the next year as part of its initiative to rate, rank and reward outstanding doctoral studies across disciplines. This scheme was launched with an aim to ensure establishment of quality research and identify talented young scholars as evident in the 2020 National Education Policy that defined creation and advancement of knowledge as key for future development of the country.
For every year, the UGC will provide ten PhD Excellence Citations, out of which two will be in sciences, engineering and technology, social sciences, Indian languages, commerce and management. These citations will be awarded to scholars of UGC recognised and NAAC accredited state, central, private as well as deemed universities who have defended their PhD theses.
For these citations, candidates should submit the links to their theses in the Information and Library Network website and showcase important research publications or patents. The above guidelines presume that the theses must follow the regulations of the UGC on the PhD degrees. Moreover the candidates must have been awarded their Ph.D within one calendar year preceding the beginning of the preceding year in October. Every university can submit up to five of them a year with no more than one thesis per the five disciplines. The nominee form can be accessed starting January 1 and the nomination submission must be received before March 31. This selection committee shall then consider those nominations and forward its list of proposed winners to the UGC, not later than August 1st. These awards are to be conferred on Teachers’ day, the 5th of September.
Every university will have its own finalizing committee that will consider several factors while selecting the candidates such as, idea novelty, relevance, research tool, writing style, importance, and oral presentation. The UGC will set up five panels to assess nomination in each discipline and each of the panels will get to select two winners.
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