Bharathidasan University PhD thesis format

Which documents set the Bharathidasan thesis format?

Three documents on bdu.ac.in give the format, and better to open them side by side in the browser when you sit for formatting.

• Ph.D. Regulations 2026. The synopsis, page limit, number of copies, language and certificates come under clauses 9 and 10. The publications you need before all this are in clause 8.5.
• Annexure III, Guidelines to Prepare Doctoral Thesis. This one is the layout specification. Paper, margins, fonts, headings, tables, figures, equations and references, all are given here.
• Annexures IV to VII (revised). Here you get specimens of the title sheet, the Supervisor’s Certificate, the Candidate’s Declaration and the Plagiarism Certificate.

Scholars in university departments and scholars in affiliated colleges or research institutes get the rules same, only the title sheet is different. Clause 10.1 also makes your supervisor responsible for a thesis “free from any sort of errors including language errors”. So expect your guide to read the draft closely before signing.

What order do the pages go in?

Annexure III lays down a “prescribed order” for the thesis. Keep to it exactly, because the Research Section checks the certificates in that same order.

Cite this data: PhD Desk, “Bharathidasan University PhD thesis format”, last reviewed 1 November 2026, https://phddesk.in/guides/thesis-format-bharathidasan

How the chapters should be organised

On chapters, Annexure III is quite direct. Chapter 1 is the Introduction, and the last chapter is the Conclusions. The chapters in between present your results, “preferably each core objective” in a separate chapter, with a title saying what that chapter is about. The guidelines ask you not to have a chapter called “Analysis & Discussion”, since that caption is only the name of a procedure and says nothing about the theme. Long derivations, extended data and raw experimental observations go in separate appendices.

Many supervisors in commerce, management and the social sciences still want one separate literature review chapter and one separate methods chapter. Annexure III does not block that plan. Discuss about the chapter plan with your guide first. After that, link each results chapter to one objective from your synopsis.

What goes on the title page and certificates?

Annexure IV (title sheet) comes in two versions. In both of them the thesis title is at the top. After that comes the line “A thesis submitted to Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in [Subject]”. Below it you write your name and reference number, and then your supervisor’s name and designation.

• University departments: below the supervisor’s details is the university emblem. Under the emblem you put the department or school name, “Bharathidasan University” and the NAAC accreditation line. Next is “Tiruchirappalli – 620 024, Tamil Nadu, India”, followed by the month and year.
• Colleges and institutes: here the university emblem is placed under the title. Your college or institute logo goes above the name and address of the college, and there is no Bharathidasan address line.

Annexure V (Supervisor’s Certificate) is in the supervisor’s letterhead block with an “applicable logo”. In it your guide certifies that the thesis is based on your work done under their guidance, and that it was not submitted anywhere else. One line in it says UGC and BDU academic-integrity principles were followed.

Annexure VI (Candidate’s Declaration) is longer than in most universities. You declare that the ideas and words of others are cited. You also state that you have not “misrepresented or fabricated or falsified any idea/data/fact/source/image”, and you accept that a violation is cause for disciplinary action. Read the full text before signing, as you are giving a real undertaking here.

Annexure VII (Certificate of Plagiarism Check) shows the similarity percentage, the software used and the date of verification. It is signed by you, your supervisor and the University Designated Authority.

Copy the wording from current annexure file and not from some senior’s thesis. Both texts got revised in late 2022, and older theses are still having the old wording.

What are the margins, font and spacing?

Most of the layout is fixed in Annexure III. Only the line spacing for tables, references and block quotes is left open. Mostly BDU scholars put those in single spacing, still ask your supervisor once.

Cite this data: PhD Desk, “Bharathidasan University PhD thesis format”, last reviewed 1 November 2026, https://phddesk.in/guides/thesis-format-bharathidasan

A few points trouble many scholars.

• Mirrored margins. Since the thesis is printed on both sides, the wider 30 mm margin changes sides. It is on the left on odd pages and on the right on even pages. For setting this in Word, go to Layout → Margins → Mirrored and give “Inside” 30 mm and “Outside” 20 mm. Separate odd and even headers you have to set also.
• Odd-page chapter starts. In Word use “Odd page” section breaks, and in LaTeX use \cleardoublepage. If you skip this, a chapter can open on a left-hand page and the headers go wrong.
• Page numbers from the second page of each chapter. The first page of every chapter is counted, but no number is printed on it.
• 300 pages is a hard limit. Appendix, tables and figures are inside this count. With 12 pt text at 1.5 spacing, most theses fit within it. But long questionnaires and raw data tables adds up fast. Shift bulky data to the CD only when your supervisor and the Research Section both agree.

How should tables, figures and references be formatted?

For tables, figures and equations, Annexure III gives the following rules.

• Put each table and figure just after you first refer to it. A large one can go on a separate page.
• The table number and title come above the table. For a figure, the number and caption come below it.
• Numbering goes chapter-wise, for example Figure 1.3, Table 2.5 and equation (3.1).
• Give equations 6 pt spacing before and after.

On references the annexure is not so clear. Annexure III says in-text references are numbered, like [1], [2-5] or [1, 6]. Then it also says you can use “anyone of the standard styles” (APA, MLA, Harvard, Oxford, CSE, ACS or AIP) if you follow it strictly. But APA, MLA and Harvard are author–date styles, and they don’t go well with numbered brackets. The guidelines also allow references either at the end of each chapter or as a separate chapter.

As we read it, the university mainly wants you to stay with one style. Choose a style the journals in your field use, and fix it with your supervisor in the beginning itself. Then use that one style in all chapters till the end. Sciences mostly use a numbered style (ACS, AIP or IEEE-like), and commerce and management mostly use APA. If the differences between styles are not clear to you, our citation styles comparison puts them side by side.

What binding and cover colour does Bharathidasan require?

Bharathidasan wants a soft-bound thesis, not hard binding. Clause 10.1 of the 2026 Regulations wants four copies “(soft binding)”. As per Annexure III the cover is white, and all the lettering is embossed in the colour of your faculty.

• Faculty of Arts: blue
• Faculty of Commerce: brown
• Faculty of Language: green
• Faculty of Management: grey
• Faculty of Science: maroon

The spine (“the bound side”) also takes the same faculty colour. On it the university emblem, your name, and the month and year of submission are embossed. Give the faculty colour to your binder in writing itself.

What do you submit, and when?

Before the synopsis

As per clause 8.5, you need at least two first-author research articles on your research topic, with your supervisor’s name on them. What is accepted depends on the faculty.

• Science, Engineering and Technology: both papers in Web of Science or Scopus.
• Arts, Languages, Commerce and Management: minimum one in Web of Science, Scopus, DOAJ, ERIC or ABDC. The other one can be in a peer-reviewed journal meeting the UGC suggestive parameters (Annexure I of the Regulations).
• Tamil, Sanskrit, Hindi, French and Arabic: two papers in peer-reviewed journals that have at least ten years of archives and continuous publication.

If you are from an affiliated college, your papers must carry the line “Affiliated to Bharathidasan University”. The journal should still be indexed at the time the Research Section checks it. Before submitting the synopsis, you have to get the Certificate for Research Publications from the Research Section.

Pre-thesis presentation and synopsis

First you give the pre-thesis submission presentation in front of the Doctoral Committee, faculty and research scholars. Their comments then go into your draft. Our guide to the pre-submission seminar has tips for the talk itself. The synopsis of 7 to 10 pages has to be submitted within 15 days. In it you cover the title, the state of the art, the problem and objectives, results and discussion, and conclusion. You hand in two copies with a PDF on CD, copies of your articles, and the panel of examiners from your supervisor in a sealed cover.

The thesis

• The thesis has to be submitted within six months from the synopsis. If you miss this, you must do the synopsis seminar again and resubmit within one year, otherwise your registration lapses.
• Four soft-bound copies are submitted in person, together with one virus-free PDF of 20 MB or less on a CD. The PDF should be word to word same as the printed copy.
• Your supervisor signs the thesis (and the co-supervisor also, if there is one). The head of the department or institution forwards the submission form.
• Attach the Tamil Virtual Academy certificate. For getting it, send Tamil and English versions of your abstract and an index of key terms (கலைச்சொற்கள்) to the Tamil Virtual Academy on the Anna University campus, Chennai (tamilvu.org). If your thesis is written in Tamil, the Tamil version only is needed. Start on this early, since it is a separate office and they take their own time.

Similarity check

The Central Library runs the thesis through DrillBit. As per clause 10.3 you are allowed similarity up to 10%, excluding your own publications and the list of references, and after the check the Librarian gives the certificate. The same 10% limit is there in the UGC’s 2018 regulations. For those UGC levels, see our plagiarism limits guide.

Where the documents disagree

• Language. According to clause 10.2, the thesis is in English, and Tamil needs a Departmental Research Committee recommendation at registration, “particularly in the discipline of History”. But clause 7.2.6 lets the Doctoral Committee to recommend Tamil in any non-language subject with the Vice-Chancellor’s approval. If you plan to write in Tamil, bring it up at the registration stage and take the approval in writing.
• The submission form. The thesis submission form on the website is dated 2022. It talks of Turnitin evidence and a one-page abstract in English (with Tamil also for Tamil-language students). The 2026 Regulations name DrillBit instead. Where the two differ, go by the Regulations and check with the Research Section.

Bharathidasan thesis checklist before submission

Sit with your supervisor and go through this list one week before you visit the binder. Once the four copies are bound, most of these points can’t be corrected.

• Title sheet is as per the correct Annexure IV version, either university department or college/institute (the college one carries both the university emblem and your college logo).
• Pages are in the Annexure III order, starting from the title sheet and ending with Publications with Reprints.
• Thesis is printed double-sided on A4, 70 GSM white bond paper, and the margins are mirrored (30 mm on the binding side).
• Body text is in Times New Roman 12 pt at 1.5 spacing. Chapter titles are 18 pt bold, sections are 16 pt and sub-sections are 14 pt.
• Every chapter starts on an odd page, and the header has the chapter number on even pages and the chapter title on odd pages.
• The whole thesis comes to 300 pages or fewer after you count the appendix, tables and figures also.
• Cover is white and soft-bound, embossed in your faculty colour. The spine has the emblem, your name, and the month and year.
• DrillBit similarity is 10% or less (your own publications and the reference list excluded), and the Central Library has signed the Annexure VII certificate.
• Your abstract and key-terms index are approved by the Tamil Virtual Academy, and its certificate is bound in.
• You are ready with four soft-bound copies and one PDF on CD, not above 20 MB and exactly the same as the print copy.
• You are still within six months from the synopsis submission.

If you prefer someone else to set the mirrored margins, headers and odd-page breaks in your file, our thesis formatting service follows the Annexure III specification. Your chapters we don’t rewrite, only the layout is set.