UGC to Launch Annual ‘PhD Excellence Citations’ Next Year
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The UGC has decided to start ten ‘PhD Excellence Citations’ every year to appreciate outstanding doctoral research by young scholars. The new initiative, to be awarded from this year, will look for excellence in PhD work across subjects, with the very first ones scheduled for presentation next year. UGC Chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar announced that the citations would celebrate “outstanding doctoral research” and would henceforth be welcomed from all universities across the country.
Five key disciplines will be covered: Sciences (including Agricultural and Medical Sciences), Engineering and Technology, Social Sciences (including Education and Humanities), Indian Languages, and Commerce and Management. The citations would be open to research scholars who successfully complete their PhD degrees between January 1 and December 31 every year. These citations will be open to scholars from state, central, private, and deemed universities.
UGC has recently cleared guidelines regarding the citation process in one of its recent meetings. The guidelines are expected to be announced and gather a response from the academic fraternity soon. Under these guidelines, every university is permitted to nominate up to five theses each year. One nomination is allowed per discipline.
The process is a two-step affair. First, shortlisting by a screening committee based at the university level. Then five separate selection committees, set up by the UGC, will scrutinize the names brought before them and present two awardees from each discipline.
In this regard, the conversation surrounding the nomination of universities is based on several parameters. These parameters consist of the novelty of the research, methodological effectiveness, clarity and coherence of the text of the thesis, overall effect, quality of presentation, and the defense of the thesis with its contribution to existing knowledge in the discipline.
There will be a portal for nominations open in January, and the winners will receive their citations on September 5 every year.
It is based on the report of the UGC research done on PhD conferred from 2011 to 2018. The report said that it came across 30% science, followed by 26% in Engineering and Technology, 12% in Social Sciences, and 6% in both Indian Languages and Management. Even the data related to PhD admissions showed an impressive growth: from 77,798 in the academic year 2010-11 to 161,412 in 2017-18.
The PhD Excellence Citations of the UGC aim to not only recognize individual excellence in research but also to excel the country’s standards of doctoral education, thus leading it to knowledge and innovation growth in India.