Uploading theses: AU not in edu ministry’s top 10 univs
PRAYAGRAJ : The Allahabad University (AU) has failed to feature among union education ministry’s list of top-10 universities of the country in terms of uploading research work in its departments on Shodhganga portal, AU officials said.
The country’s fourth oldest varsity couldn’t make the cut as it had uploaded just 1355 thesis till date on the University Grant Commission (UGC) portal in past 10 years, officials said.
To prevent plagiarism, UGC prepared a regulation of PhD in 2009 which states that after conferring MPhil and PhD degrees, it is mandatory to upload an electronic copy of the research on the Shodhganga portal operated by Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET).
“Here at AU, authorities of central library had started keeping the softcopy of the thesis, submitted by the PhD scholars at the central library but since the varsity had not signed MoU with INFLIBNET, the theses were not uploaded on UGC’s portal,” a university official said.
It was only in 2015 when AU inked a pact with INFLIBNET that theses started being uploaded on Shodhganga, the official said.
The MoU not only mentioned uploading the theses but also digitalization of the theses that were submitted in hard copy before January 1, 2010.
Officials concede that there are around 17000 theses at AU which are yet to be digitized but since the needed infrastructure is not in place, the same has not been done till date. The varsity had floated a tender couple of years back to procure the infrastructure but the same was scrapped later on technical grounds.
Librarian of AU’s central library, Dr BK Singh said, “AU signed the MoU in 2015 and since then whichever thesis is being awarded from 2010 till date, all have been uploaded on the portal.
Besides, anti-plagiarism software Urkund is also being used to prevent plagiarism and access of the same has been provided to all the teaching faculty members of AU.”
He said apart from stopping the practice of plagiarism, this allows the students sitting remotely to get information about the research at any of the university in the country.
However, with only 1355 PhD thesis since 2010 uploaded by AU, the varsity does not feature in top-10 list. Earlier, it also failed to make a place in the top200 universities of the country in National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF).
According to the UGC ranking, Madras University is placed at the top (in terms of uploading theses) by uploading 12166 theses. Kolkata University is ranked at second place with 11905 theses, Savitri Bai Phule University is ranked at third place with 10561 theses. Anna University with 9804, Chhatrapati Shahu Ji Maharaj University with 9781, Aligarh Muslim University with 8263, VBS Purvanchal University with 8201, Punjab University with 7610, Bharathidasan University with 5931 and Manonmanian Sundaranar University with 5618 theses are others in Top-10.