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 read the gazette text line by line, and clause 11 (evaluation and assessment) lists what a scholar must do before submitting: finish coursework, make a pre-submission presentation to the Research Advisory Committee, and submit the thesis with a no-plagiarism undertaking and the supervisor’s originality certificate. There is no paper count. 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. Clause 9.4 read: “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.”

In between came the draft 2022 regulations. Their clause 9.3 said it was “desirable” that PhD work be published in peer-reviewed or refereed journals and presented at conferences, and that institutions were “free to evolve guidelines in this regard”. That sentence did not survive into the final notification of 7 November 2022.

You will often read that UGC 2022 “strongly recommends” publication. That wording comes from the UGC chairman, not the regulations. In November 2022, M. Jagadesh Kumar told the press that publication “may not be mandatory anymore, but it does not mean Ph.D. scholars should stop doing that altogether”, and that he would “strongly urge” universities to train scholars to publish, present at conferences and apply for patents. His example was computer science, where many scholars prefer conferences to journals. Fair enough as intent, but it is not a clause you can quote to your research section.

Registered before November 2022? Clause 16 lets your degree be governed by either set, so the 2016 rule may still apply to you.

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

Not as a national rule, because the list no longer exists as a current approval. UGC announced the discontinuation of UGC-CARE listing in a public notice of 11 February 2025, and in July 2025 published the last list for reference only. Our UGC-CARE list guide has the dates and what replaced the list, so I won’t repeat them here.

The trouble is local. Ordinances written while the list existed often still say “UGC-CARE”. The University of Madras regulations, amended in March 2023, still name the UGC CARE list alongside Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed and SCI. VTU’s 2026 checklist keeps a UGC-CARE option for older batches only. Anna University’s October 2025 amendments replaced UGC-CARE with Web of Science or Scopus in the supervisor-recognition rules.

If yours still says UGC-CARE, ask whether the archived list is accepted or whether only Scopus, Web of Science or a university list now counts. Then pick the journal.

What do Indian universities still require in 2026?

Every university we checked kept a requirement after 2022. The four below are ones where I read the current regulation or checklist myself. They are examples, not a survey, and each university can change its rules by circular at any time.

The table shows that the rule often bites at the synopsis, months before the thesis: at Anna University and Madras, no paper means no synopsis. The list that matters is the university’s, not UGC’s, and Anna University edits its list by circular (its October 2025 amendment removed a journal with immediate effect). And presentations survive, at Bharathiar and Madras, straight from the 2016 rule.

Institutes of national importance, such as the IITs, set their own rules through their senates and are outside this table.

The Anna University thesis format guide covers how the published papers are then attached to the thesis.

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

Not from seniors or WhatsApp groups, who are usually describing an older batch. Work from the documents:

1. 1

   Find the regulations that apply to your batch

   Download the PhD regulations from your university’s research page and check which version covers your year of admission.

2. 2

   Search for the right clause

   Open the PDF and search for publication, journal, synopsis and seminar. The rule usually sits in the clause on submission of the synopsis or the thesis, not in a section called publications.

3. 3

   Read the circulars issued since

   Research sections change journal lists and checklists by circular. VTU and Anna University both did so in 2025 and 2026. A regulation from 2023 plus a circular from last month is the real rule.

4. 4

   Write down the five details

   How many papers, in which kind of journal, at what stage (synopsis or thesis), whether accepted or only published papers count, and what authorship and affiliation conditions apply.

5. 5

   Confirm it in writing

   Email the research section or ask your Doctoral Committee to minute it at the next meeting.

6. 6

   Check each journal against that rule before you submit

   Verify indexing yourself in Scopus or the Web of Science Master Journal List, or find the title on your university’s own list, before the paper goes in.

Do this in your first year. It decides when your first paper has to go out, and our PhD timeline guide shows how to plan backwards from it.

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

A common setback: the paper is out, it is indexed, and the research section still returns the synopsis over a detail. From the documents above:

• Article type. Anna University accepts only full-length research articles; short communications, letters and short notes do not count for the synopsis.
• Your position in the author list. Anna University wants the scholar as first author, or second when the supervisor is first, and caps at least one paper at four authors. How to agree author order is covered in our authorship guide.
• Names and affiliation on the paper. VTU requires the scholar’s and guide’s names on the published paper. Madras requires the university’s name in the affiliation for papers from its recognised centres.
• Published, not just accepted. Anna University needs DOI or issue details and a volume and issue number. Bharathiar lets you submit the synopsis on an acceptance, but the papers must be out before the thesis.
• Timing. Anna University counts only papers published after you joined the PhD programme.
• Retractions. Anna University will not process a thesis on the strength of a paper retracted during scrutiny.

Scopus or Web of Science

The journal must be indexed when you publish, and you verify that yourself, not from the journal’s website. Our guide to checking Scopus indexing shows how. VTU’s rule adds a quartile (Q1 to Q3), but the checklist doesn’t say whether that means the SJR quartile from SCImago or the CiteScore percentile shown on the journal’s Scopus page, and the two can differ. Ask the research section which one it accepts before you choose the journal.

Conference proceedings

Bharathiar says outright that proceedings papers don’t count. Unless your own rule expressly accepts indexed proceedings, assume they won’t. The conference versus journal guide covers when a conference is still worth your time.

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

Take an illustrative scholar, Priya, a full-time PhD in environmental science at a university that asks for two papers in Scopus or SCI journals before the thesis, one of which must be published before the synopsis. She wants to submit the synopsis at the end of her fourth year.

Her first paper needs to be out, with volume and issue, by the end of year three. Allowing for review and one rejection, it must be submitted by the end of year two, so her pilot data has to be analysed by then. The second paper can follow while she writes. Our guide on how long journal publication takes gives the stage-by-stage ranges she used.

What she avoided was writing the thesis first and “converting chapters into papers” in year four, which would have cost her a year.

If you find yourself short of time, a journal that promises acceptance in weeks may look appealing, but it may not follow standard peer review. Anna University also requires the paper to remain available in the journal’s regular issue until your degree is awarded, and a journal that disappears or gets delisted can leave you with a paper that no longer counts. Run the predatory journal checks before you pay any fee.