Plagiarism and similarity reduction in Kolkata

What similarity limit and checking tool does each Kolkata university use?

The UGC 2018 regulations set the national levels, explained in our guide to plagiarism limits. Each university then decides the tool, the person who runs it and what to exclude. This is what the Kolkata documents say.

The table holds two lessons. First, one university can use two tools. Jadavpur’s library offers DrillBit, while its engineering faculty requires iThenticate. The same chapter often scores differently on each. Second, some documents give no percentage at all (Presidency, IIEST). There, the working limit is whatever your research centre or IPR Cell applies. Ask for it in writing before you revise to a target that may be wrong.

How does the University of Calcutta’s 10% rule work in practice?

Regulation 11.4 of the Ph.D. Regulations, 2025 makes the university provide plagiarism detection software to scholars and supervisors. It comes through the Central Library or another designated office. Regulation 11.5 then sets three conditions at submission:

• The report. You need a plagiarism verification report on UGC or university-approved software, with a similarity index not above 10%. That figure comes after leaving out what Regulation 7 of the UGC 2018 regulations excludes. The list is quotations with attribution, references, the contents page, acknowledgements, standard terms and equations, and runs of up to 14 words.
• The exception. Sometimes the index is above 10% for reasons the SRAC finds justifiable. Then the supervisor certifies the justification, and the SRAC members endorse it before it goes to the Ph.D. Administration Office. It’s a route for genuine cases, such as a thesis quoting statutes or a standard protocol at length. It isn’t for loosely paraphrased reviews.
• The same file. The supervisor must make sure the thesis submitted and the thesis that was checked “are one and the same”. Editing after the check breaks that rule, even to fix typing errors. So all our work has to finish before the library run.

The undertaking you sign also covers AI. Any text, images or other material produced by an AI tool must be disclosed and marked in the thesis. So if you reword flagged passages with a paraphrasing tool, you create a disclosure problem as well as an integrity one. Our page on using AI tools during a PhD covers where universities usually draw that line.

How do you get the check done? The library’s notice of 5 August 2024 asks you to e-mail the Word or PDF file to [email protected]. Your head of department or supervisor forwards it. Include the author’s name, the title and the document type (thesis, synopsis or paper). Add the supervisor’s name and e-mail too. The notice does not name the software. So ask the library which tool produced your report before you compare it with ours.

How does Jadavpur University’s iThenticate procedure run for engineering theses?

Jadavpur’s procedure under its Policy on Anti-Plagiarism puts the check in your hands and the approval in your supervisor’s:

1. You check the thesis on iThenticate, applying the exclusions and filters listed in the Faculty of Engineering and Technology’s guidelines.
2. Your supervisor verifies and approves the exclusion list, including your own publications related to the thesis, and the similarity percentage.
3. The percentage declared in the thesis is certified by the supervisor (for PG theses, the head of department also approves it).
4. The thesis goes in at Level 0, at most 10%. With it go a statement of originality, the exclusion list, the software’s report and the full iThenticate analysis as an annotated PDF of the whole thesis.
5. Disputes go to the Departmental Academic Integrity Panel, then the faculty panel, then the head of the institution’s panel. That last panel’s decision is final.

Remember the last line of the procedure. The similarity results are sent to the examiner with the thesis. Your examiner will see every highlighted match, not just the headline figure. So a 9% thesis whose results chapter lights up still invites questions. The FET submission checklist adds the paperwork. You hand in the exclusion list and filter settings, signed, in hard copy and as a scan on CD. The annotated PDF is signed on its last page.

Outside engineering, the Centre for Digital Library and Documentation gives access to DrillBit under INFLIBNET’s ShodhShuddhi programme. That replaced the URKUND access the university had through its MoU with INFLIBNET. Our DrillBit guide and Turnitin report guide explain how to read each report.

How strict are WBUHS, Presidency and IIEST Shibpur about similarity?

WBUHS. The health university’s 2020 plagiarism policy is the most detailed in the city. Its rules for the text itself:

• A “zero tolerance” policy for the core of the work, meaning the abstract and summary, the hypothesis, your observations and results, and what you conclude and recommend.
• Citation is essential once ten words are taken together from established work. A borrowed passage that reaches 40 words in total goes in inverted commas and italics.
• Your own papers from the thesis may be excluded only if the supervisor lists and attaches them in a Plagiarism Self Exclusion Certificate. Earlier papers of yours outside the thesis stay in the comparison. So do all of your supervisor’s.

The workflow runs through people, not just software. You send the soft copy through your guide to the department’s Academic Integrity Panel. The head chairs that panel, with an outside academic and a member who knows the software. Your guide checks the core sections, leaving out the review of literature and references. The panel then certifies whether the index is below or above the permitted figure. A thesis above it comes back for correction and a fresh fee. A third submission is final, and failing it means rejection. The Plagiarism Verification Certificate names the software, date, index and word count. It is bound in after the copyright page.

Presidency. The Ph.D. Regulation 2023 (8.6) asks for an anti-plagiarism certificate or certificate of similarity from UGC-recommended software. You and your supervisor sign it, and a photocopy goes in each of the five hard copies. It states no percentage. So the UGC’s 10% Level 0 is the safe working figure unless your department says otherwise.

IIEST Shibpur. Under section 21 of the doctoral ordinances, the Institute’s IPR Cell checks every thesis. Its acceptance report or certificate is submitted with the thesis. On the submission form, you confirm the thesis was prepared without plagiarism and attach the IPR Cell report. The Cell runs the check, so you won’t see its settings in advance. If its report comes back high, send it to us. At St. Xavier’s University, you’ll usually meet Turnitin Feedback Studio. Its Arrupe Central Library subscribes to it alongside DrillBit.

Working with us from Kolkata

Send the report and the document. We read them and reply with a fixed written quote. Work then moves in stages by e-mail. Each suggested change shows as a tracked edit that you keep or discard. Where a passage needs talking through, we get on a video call. How the stages are timed depends on your university’s check:

• Calcutta: everything ends before you e-mail the thesis to the library, because the checked and submitted files must match. Is a leftover match legitimate, such as a statute quoted in full? Then we help you write the note your supervisor needs for the SRAC.
• Jadavpur engineering: your iThenticate run with the FET exclusions is the number that counts. So we look at that report, not ours, before calling a chapter finished. We also help you set out each exclusion so your supervisor can approve it.
• WBUHS: a resubmission means another fee, and there are only three chances. So we put the core sections first (results, conclusions, recommendations). We aim to clear them before the guide’s first run.
• IIEST and Presidency: ask the IPR Cell or department for its working limit first, and plan the revision to that figure.

Our own reports state the checker and settings used. We switch off repository storage where the checker allows. That way your thesis isn’t added to a database that later flags your own submission. The ethics policy explains why nothing is handed to a paraphrasing tool.