Is publication mandatory for a PhD in India after UGC 2022?

What do the UGC 2022 regulations say about publishing before thesis submission?

Nothing. I have gone through the gazette text line by line. Clause 11 (evaluation and assessment) lists the things a scholar has to do before submitting. Coursework must be completed. There is a pre-submission presentation before the Research Advisory Committee. After that the thesis goes in with a no-plagiarism undertaking and the supervisor’s originality certificate. Nowhere is a paper count mentioned. Publications come up only in the rules for supervisors and examiners, and in the name of the Research and Publication Ethics course.

The 2016 regulations were different on this point. Clause 9.4 of those regulations read as follows, in full. “Ph.D. scholars must publish at least one (1) research paper in refereed journal and make two paper presentations in conferences/seminars before the submission of the dissertation/thesis for adjudication, and produce evidence for the same in the form of presentation certificates and/or reprints.”

Between the two came the draft 2022 regulations. Clause 9.3 of the draft called it “desirable” that PhD work be published in peer-reviewed or refereed journals and presented at conferences. The draft also left institutions “free to evolve guidelines in this regard”, but that sentence was gone in the final notification of 7 November 2022.

You may see on some websites that UGC 2022 “strongly recommends” publication. The chairman used those words in a press talk, and the regulations have no such line. M. Jagadesh Kumar spoke to the press in November 2022. He said publication “may not be mandatory anymore, but it does not mean Ph.D. scholars should stop doing that altogether”. He also said he would “strongly urge” universities to train scholars to publish, present at conferences and apply for patents. He gave computer science as example, where scholars go for conferences more than journals. But what he told reporters has no clause number, so your research section can’t go by it.

Did you register before November 2022? In that case clause 16 lets your degree come under either the old or the new regulations, and the 2016 paper rule may still be there for you.

Does my paper still need to be in a UGC-CARE journal?

As a national rule, no. The list is no longer a current approval. UGC announced in a public notice dated 11 February 2025 that UGC-CARE listing was ending. The last list came out in July 2025, and that was for reference only. The dates and what replaced the list are all in our UGC-CARE list guide, so I am not repeating those informations here.

The problem comes at the university level. Many ordinances were written when the list still existed, and they still say “UGC-CARE”. The University of Madras regulations, amended in March 2023, name the UGC CARE list along with Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed and SCI. In VTU’s 2026 checklist the UGC-CARE option is kept for older batches only. Anna University went the other way in its October 2025 amendments. In the rules for recognising supervisors, it replaced UGC-CARE with Web of Science or Scopus.

Is your ordinance still saying UGC-CARE? Ask the research section if the archived list is taken, or only Scopus, Web of Science or a university list. Pick the journal after they revert.

What do Indian universities still require in 2026?

Every university we checked still had a rule after 2022. For the four in the table, I read the current regulation or checklist myself. Treat these four as examples only, because we have not checked every university. Any university can change its rules through a circular at any time.

Look at the stage column first. Mostly the paper is needed at synopsis time, months before the thesis is ready. At Anna University and Madras, if there is no paper, the synopsis is not accepted. And the list which matters is the university’s own list, not the UGC one. Anna University keeps changing its list by circular, and in the October 2025 amendment one journal was removed with immediate effect. Presentations are still required at Bharathiar and Madras, carried over straight from the 2016 rule.

The IITs and other institutes of national importance make their own rules through their senates. They are not covered in this table.

How the published papers get attached to the thesis afterwards is explained in the Anna University thesis format guide.

How do I find out my own university’s publication rule?

Seniors and WhatsApp groups are not reliable here, because mostly they are describing the rule of an older batch. Go by the documents, in the order given below.

1. 1

   Find the regulations that apply to your batch

   Go to your university’s research page and download the PhD regulations. See which version covers the year you were admitted.

2. 2

   Search for the right clause

   Open the PDF and search the words publication, journal, synopsis and seminar. Mostly the rule is inside the clause on synopsis or thesis submission. You will usually not find it under a heading called publications.

3. 3

   Read the circulars issued since

   The research section keeps changing journal lists and checklists through circulars. VTU and Anna University both did this in 2025 and 2026. Your real rule can be a 2023 regulation plus a circular that came last month.

4. 4

   Write down the five details

   Note how many papers, which kind of journal, and at what stage (synopsis or thesis). Then see if acceptance is enough, and what they say on authorship and affiliation.

5. 5

   Confirm it in writing

   Send a mail to the research section, or request your Doctoral Committee to record it in the minutes of next meeting.

6. 6

   Check each journal against that rule before you submit

   Before the paper goes in, verify the indexing yourself in Scopus or the Web of Science Master Journal List. Otherwise look for the journal title in your university’s own list.

Finish this exercise in your first year itself. Then you know by which month the first paper must go out, and you can count backwards with our PhD timeline guide.

Which papers count: Scopus, conference proceedings, accepted papers?

This setback is very common. The paper is published and indexed also, but the research section still send the synopsis back because of some small detail. The points below come from the same documents.

• Article type. Anna University accepts full-length research articles only. Short communications, letters and short notes are not counted for the synopsis.
• Your position in the author list. Anna University wants the scholar as first author, or as second author when the supervisor is first. At least one paper must have four authors or fewer. For fixing the author order with your guide, see our authorship guide.
• Names and affiliation on the paper. VTU wants the names of both the scholar and the guide on the published paper. For papers coming from its recognised centres, Madras wants the university’s name in the affiliation.
• Published, not just accepted. For Anna University you have to give the DOI or issue details, and the volume and issue number too. At Bharathiar an acceptance is enough to submit the synopsis, but the papers have to be published before the thesis goes in.
• Timing. Only papers published after you joined the PhD programme are counted by Anna University.
• Retractions. If a paper gets retracted during scrutiny, Anna University will not process the thesis on the basis of that paper.

Scopus or Web of Science

The journal has to be indexed at the time you publish. Check that yourself in the database, and don’t rely on the journal’s website for it. Our guide to checking Scopus indexing shows how. VTU’s rule adds one more condition, a quartile of Q1 to Q3. The checklist does not say which quartile it means. It may be the SJR quartile from SCImago, or the CiteScore percentile shown on the journal’s Scopus page, and these two can be different. So before choosing the journal, ask the research section which one they accept.

Conference proceedings

Bharathiar clearly says proceedings papers are not counted. Many rules are silent on indexed proceedings, and in that case I would not count on your conference paper. Whether a conference is still worth your time is discussed in the conference versus journal guide.

A worked example: a two-paper rule and a synopsis deadline

Take Priya as an illustration. She is doing a full-time PhD in environmental science. Her university needs two papers in Scopus or SCI journals before the thesis, and one of the two has to be published before the synopsis. Her plan is to submit the synopsis at the end of her fourth year.

That means her first paper must be out, with volume and issue, by the end of year three. Keep time for review and for one rejection, and the paper has to be submitted by the end of year two. So her pilot data analysis must be finished by that time. The second paper can be done side by side while she writes the thesis. She took the stage-wise time ranges from our guide on how long journal publication takes.

She did not write the full thesis first and then try “converting chapters into papers” in year four. Doing it that way would have cost her one full year.

Some journals promise acceptance within weeks. Close to the synopsis date that offer looks good, but mostly there is no proper peer review behind it. Anna University also needs the paper to remain available in the journal’s regular issue till your degree is awarded. A journal like that may close down or get delisted midway, and then the paper may not be counted. Before paying any fee, run the predatory journal checks.