Plagiarism and similarity reduction in Trichy

Which similarity limit applies to a Trichy thesis: 10%, 15% or 20%?

The university that awards your degree decides. In the Trichy area, the four you’re likely to meet each set a different line.

The gap between 10% and 20% is larger than it looks. A chapter that passes comfortably at NIT Trichy can fail at a Bharathidasan college centre. Who gets caught out? Scholars who switch from one system to the other, or who reuse text from an NIT project report. The exclusions differ too. Bharathidasan names only your own publications and the reference list. The UGC’s 2018 regulations also exclude quoted work with proper attribution and standard formulae. But clause 10.3 doesn’t repeat that, so ask the library how its settings treat properly quoted passages. Our guide to plagiarism limits explains the UGC levels.

SASTRA’s wording is the strictest of the four. “No single statement matching with the existing literature” goes beyond a percentage. Even a small total can fail if one sentence is lifted whole. We come to its 0% AI requirement below.

Who checks a Bharathidasan thesis, and will it be DrillBit or Turnitin?

The check is centralised. Under clause 10.3 of the Ph.D. Regulations 2026, the Librarian of the university’s Central Library certifies the Plagiarism Check Certificate after a check on DrillBit. Your supervisor signs it too, and so does your co-supervisor if you have one. The certificate format is Annexure VII in the thesis annexures. It records the percentage found, the software used and the date of verification. You, your supervisor and the “University Designated Authority” sign it. It’s bound into the thesis after the Candidate’s Declaration, as our Bharathidasan format guide shows.

The university’s own pages don’t all name the same software.

• The 2026 Regulations name DrillBit.
• The 2022 thesis submission form asks for a supervisor’s plagiarism-free certificate with a single page of Turnitin evidence.
• The library’s facilities page says authorised staff run checks “through software like Turn It In” in its Shodhganga Lab.

Follow the Regulations, which are the newest. Before you trust any pre-check, ask the library which software will generate your certificate. Who do you ask? The library’s contact page lists a coordinator for the Plagiarism Check and Shodhganga Lab. And the Directorate of Research names a Coordinator for Research Ethics and Plagiarism on its research ethics page, reachable at [email protected].

The documents don’t say how many attempts you get, or what happens if the first check is over 10%. Nothing in the 2026 Regulations sets a number, so plan as if the library’s check is your final one. DrillBit and Turnitin compare against different databases and give different figures for the same file. A clean result on one proves little about the other. Our DrillBit guide explains its report.

How does NIT Tiruchirappalli handle the plagiarism report before and after the viva?

At NIT Trichy the report travels with the thesis at two points.

1. At submission. P.21 of the Ph.D. Regulations 2024 needs a plagiarism report attested by your supervisor. It must show similarity below 20% once your own publications are excluded. The current Form 8 lists it among the enclosures, next to a soft copy of the thesis under 10 MB.
2. After the viva. The same form asks for one A5 hard copy of the revised thesis “along with its plagiarism report”. Corrections made after the examiners’ reports are checked again. So new text you add at that stage needs the same care as the rest.

Then there’s the Shodhganga upload. Form 10C in the Central Library’s e-thesis guidelines has you declare that you checked the thesis with standard anti-plagiarism software. You enclose the report as a separate PDF, and your guide declares being satisfied with it. A separate Plagiarism Verification Form goes in at the same time.

The institute’s thesis submission portal page was set up for postgraduate theses. It publishes a Turnitin similarity sample, and one line in it is worth studying. It’s a match labelled “Submitted to National Institute Of Technology, Tiruchirappalli”, classed as a student paper. That label means the matching text went into the institute’s Turnitin account earlier. Is it your own synopsis, M.Tech. thesis or an earlier draft? Then tell your supervisor and ask for it to be excluded. P.21 already leaves out your own publications. Our guide to reading a Turnitin report shows how to separate those matches from real problems.

What do Bharathidasan and SASTRA treat as plagiarism beyond the similarity figure?

Bharathidasan’s Code of Ethics to Check Malpractices and Plagiarism in Research is short and direct. It lists copying, stealing, lifting and paraphrasing as plagiarism, punishable if proved. It adds that presenting someone else’s work as your own is plagiarism even with that person’s permission. Quoting the original properly isn’t plagiarism. The code also expects every piece of research to go through plagiarism software before publication or adjudication, with the report attached. And it sets up a committee to establish facts and recommend penalties.

Two practical points follow. Rewording a source without citing it doesn’t make it yours, so our first pass is always citation and quotation repair, not rewriting. The second point comes later, if you publish the thesis as a book. Clause 16 of the Regulations then has you and your supervisor jointly sign an undertaking. In it you accept responsibility for any self-plagiarism or copyright issue. That’s a reason to cite your own papers inside the thesis, not paste them in silently.

SASTRA’s PhD rules add the AI line. You need 0% AI content in Turnitin at thesis submission. Plagiarism, fabrication or falsification ends your registration, and SASTRA can revoke a degree after award. AI indicators are estimates and can misfire on plain academic English. Keep your drafts, notes and version history as evidence of how you wrote. We found no AI figure in the Bharathidasan or NIT Trichy documents we read. Our note on AI tools in a PhD covers the general position.

What about Anna University scholars at BIT Campus? Clause 23 of the R2025 regulations applies the UGC levels. Over 10% and up to 40% means a revised thesis within six months. Higher levels mean a year’s debarment or cancellation. If you still need a Bharathidasan guide in the first place, see our Trichy guide page.

Working with us from Trichy

The work runs by email and video call from Nagercoil. Send the Word file and whichever report you already have. That might be a DrillBit report from the Bharathidasan Central Library, a Turnitin report from your NIT Trichy supervisor, or SASTRA’s portal report. We sort every match into cited, uncited, quotation, excluded category or genuine overlap. The references and quotation marks get fixed first. Then we go through the remaining passages with you in tracked changes. You rewrite with our suggestions, following the principles in our note on paraphrasing and quoting.

Timing is what differs in Trichy. At Bharathidasan the library’s check is part of thesis submission itself. Nothing in the rules promises a second attempt, so we aim to finish before you apply for the certificate. At NIT Trichy, allow for two reports: one at submission and one on your revised thesis after the viva. For SASTRA, keep the AI requirement in mind from the first draft. Our edits are human edits in tracked changes, never machine rewriting.

Our fresh report states the checker and settings used. It may not match the university’s own tool exactly, so treat it as a close guide. The official check, the certificate and its signatures stay with your library and supervisor.