Plagiarism and similarity reduction in Chennai

What similarity limit does each Chennai university set for a PhD thesis?

The table records only what each university’s own document says. Where a document is silent, we say so. We don’t fill the gap with the national figure.

Two cautions. First, several of these documents are older than the national change of tool. INFLIBNET replaced Ouriginal with DrillBit for universities on its ShodhShuddhi licence from October 2023. So a page that still says Urkund may describe a tool your university no longer runs. Ask your research office which software produced the report it will accept. Our DrillBit guide explains that tool. Second, the M.G.R. Medical University’s PhD figures come from a web message for scholars registered from July 2011. That’s older than the UGC’s 2018 regulations, so confirm that 15% still stands for your session. The UGC levels behind most of these rules are in our plagiarism limits guide.

What do Chennai checkers leave out, and do your own published papers count against you?

You get a frightening first report, and then the figure that counts. Most of the gap between them comes from here.

• Anna University. The CFR plagiarism policy leaves a lot out. It drops properly attributed quotations and the reference list and bibliography. It drops front matter such as the contents, preface and acknowledgements. Standard symbols, equations, laws and generic terms are out, and so are repeat uploads of the same document. It also excludes the publications you claim in the thesis, and unclaimed papers that meet the clause 16.2 conditions. So your own CFR-listed papers should not push your thesis over the line.
• IIT Madras. In the Annexure 17 undertaking you record the settings (quotes and bibliography excluded). You also record two figures. One is the total match. The other is the part of it that comes from publications based on the thesis work. You also certify that nothing was changed after the check.
• M.G.R. Medical University. Its PhD rule counts any run of more than 10 continuous words. That’s tighter than the 14-word allowance in the UGC 2018 note. A long, unquoted sentence from a guideline or a drug monograph will show up even when the overall figure is low.
• University of Madras and SRMIST. Neither regulation lists exclusions. Ask the Madras library or the SRMIST research office which filters they apply, and in what order, before you start revising.

Our walkthrough of a Turnitin report, source by source, applies equally to Urkund and DrillBit output.

What happens at Anna University, Madras and IIT Madras when the report is too high?

Anna University takes the UGC 2018 thesis penalties into its own regulations (R2025, clause 23). From 10% to 40%, you submit a revised thesis within a period of up to six months. From 40% to 60%, resubmission is barred for a year. Beyond 60%, the registration is cancelled. A 2022 amendment adds an enquiry at the Centre for Research. There you’re told to correct the text and resubmit with the UGC penalty. CFR’s penalty circular of 27 January 2025 restates those levels for scholars. It also applies the UGC’s publication penalties to supervisors found plagiarising, including a bar on taking new scholars. A PhD found plagiarised after award is withdrawn. Its FAQ lists “exceeding the acceptable plagiarism level” first among reasons a synopsis is returned.

University of Madras. Under clause 14.18 the Syndicate may revoke the degree when plagiarism in the thesis is discovered afterwards. So don’t treat the library certificate as the end of the matter. Text you weren’t sure about should be fixed, not just brought under a number.

IIT Madras. The scholar’s undertaking says that if it is later found false, that may be sufficient reason to withdraw the degree. The guide certifies having read the entire Turnitin report, not just the percentage.

All of this is why we refuse paraphrasing tools, character substitution and hidden text. They can lower a score for a day. Then they turn a similarity problem into a misconduct case. Our ethics policy explains where we stop.

When is the official check run in Chennai, and how many attempts do you get?

• M.G.R. Medical University: you get the PhD certificate 45 to 60 days before you submit the thesis. The anti-plagiarism report is attached as the last page. You give your name, branch, file or register number and email in a separate letter with the synopsis application. The library has a separate page for postgraduate dissertations. It allows the web tool four times only, at a 25% limit. That page is about dissertations, not PhD theses. But it shows how the university counts attempts.
• Anna University: the report’s first page, the one with the similarity index, goes into the bound thesis (clause 17.5). The CFR scrutiny checklist asks for the report with the thesis. The check runs on your supervisor’s login, so book time with your supervisor for it.
• IIT Madras: the report goes in with the A4 thesis, and again after the viva if the examiners asked for major revisions. The guide checks the final A5 version before it reaches the academic section. Turnitin access for scholars is through the guide, according to the Central Library’s research tools page.
• University of Madras: the application form and current rules come from the Librarian of the university library at Chepauk, or from the other campus libraries (clause 12.5). Our Madras admission guide covers the rest of the university’s process.

Working with us from Chennai

You send the document with the report your university will rely on, or the closest you can get to it. For an Anna University scholar that usually means the Urkund report from your supervisor’s login. At IIT Madras it’s the Turnitin report your guide ran. We read it with your university’s exclusions in mind. After that we go through the matches together, by video call and in tracked changes.

Our own fresh report is run on a standard checker, with the settings written on it. It’s a guide to progress, not a replacement for the official check. At Anna University the claimed-publication exclusion may make the official figure lower than ours. For M.G.R. Medical University scholars, we plan the revision to finish before the 45 to 60 day certificate window opens. That way the university’s tool is used on a finished text. At Madras, ask the library for its current figure first. We then work toward that number, not toward a guess.