Under the UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018, similarity up to 10% is classified as Level 0, meaning minor similarities with no penalty. Above that, three penalty levels apply. Your university may set a stricter internal limit, and where it does, the stricter figure governs your submission.
These Regulations were notified in New Delhi on 23 July 2018 and published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary, Part III, Section 4. Everything below is taken from that text.
What are the four levels of plagiarism?
Clause 8 of the Regulations defines four levels in ascending order of severity:
| Level | Similarity | Classification |
|---|---|---|
| Level 0 | Up to 10% | Minor similarities, no penalty |
| Level 1 | Above 10% to 40% | Penalty applies |
| Level 2 | Above 40% to 60% | Penalty applies |
| Level 3 | Above 60% | Most severe penalty |
Note the wording carefully. The Regulations do not say that 10% is a target to aim for or a pass mark. They say similarities up to 10% attract no penalty. That is a different statement, and the difference matters when your report comes back at 9%: a low percentage does not certify that your work is free of plagiarism, only that the tool found little textual overlap.
What are the penalties for a research scholar?
For students, the Regulations specify:
- Level 0 (up to 10%): minor similarities, no penalty.
- Level 1 (above 10% to 40%): the student shall be asked to submit a revised script within a stipulated time period not exceeding six months.
- Level 2 (above 40% to 60%): the student shall be debarred from submitting a revised script for a period of one year.
- Level 3 (above 60%): the student’s registration for that programme shall be cancelled.
Read Level 2 and Level 3 again, because scholars routinely underestimate them. Level 2 costs you a year. Level 3 ends your registration for the programme. These are not warnings.
What are the penalties for faculty and supervisors?
The Regulations set out a separate schedule for faculty, researchers and staff:
- Level 1 (above 10% to 40%): shall be asked to withdraw the manuscript.
- Level 2 (above 40% to 60%): shall withdraw the manuscript, shall be denied a right to one annual increment, and shall not be allowed to supervise any new Master’s, M.Phil. or PhD student for two years.
- Level 3 (above 60%): shall withdraw the manuscript, shall be denied two successive annual increments, and shall not be allowed to supervise any new student for three years.
Repeat offences are punished at one level higher than the level committed. Where a Level 3 offence is repeated, the Regulations provide for disciplinary action including suspension or termination under the institution’s service rules.
What is excluded from the similarity check?
This is the clause most scholars have never read, and it is the one that most often explains an inflated percentage. Clause 7 states that similarity checks shall exclude:
- All quoted work reproduced with all necessary permission and/or attribution.
- All references, bibliography, table of contents, preface and acknowledgements.
- All generic terms, laws, standard symbols and standard equations.
A note attached to the same clause adds two further points. First, the research work must be based on original ideas, and the Regulations specify that this covers the abstract, summary, hypothesis, observations, results, conclusions and recommendations, which shall not have any similarities. Second, the check excludes common knowledge or coincidental terms up to fourteen consecutive words.
Two practical consequences follow. If your report was generated without excluding the bibliography and quoted matter, the percentage you are looking at is not the figure the Regulations describe. And if your overall percentage is low but the overlap sits in your results or conclusions, that is a far more serious problem than a higher percentage spread across your literature review.
Does my university’s limit override the UGC figure?
In practice, yes, where it is stricter. The Regulations require every higher educational institution to develop a plagiarism policy, get it approved by its relevant statutory bodies, and place the approved policy on the homepage of the institution’s website.
That last requirement is useful to you: your university’s policy is supposed to be publicly available on its own website. Find it and read the actual figure and procedure that will be applied to your submission, rather than relying on what a senior scholar tells you. Departments within the same university sometimes apply different internal expectations.
What else does the institution have to do?
The Regulations place several obligations on institutions that affect you directly:
- You must submit an undertaking stating that the document is your original work and free of plagiarism, and that it has been checked through a plagiarism detection tool approved by the institution.
- Your supervisor must submit a certificate stating that the work done under their supervision is plagiarism free.
- The institution must submit soft copies of all Masters and research programme dissertations and theses to INFLIBNET within one month after the award of degrees, for hosting in the Shodh Ganga e-repository.
- The institution must maintain its own institutional repository including theses and publications.
That third point is why your thesis becomes publicly searchable after your degree is awarded. What that means for you in practice is covered in the guide on what Shodhganga is and whether your thesis will be uploaded there.
Which detection tool will be used?
The Regulations require the use of a plagiarism detection tool approved by the institution, without mandating a specific product nationally. Different universities license different software, and different tools produce different percentages on the same document because their comparison databases and settings differ.
This has a practical implication worth knowing before you panic about a number: a percentage from a free online checker is not comparable to the report your department will generate. Treat any self-check as an indication of where overlap sits, not as a prediction of the official figure.
What should you do if your report comes back too high?
First, read the report rather than the number. Identify whether the overlap sits in the literature review, the methodology, or the results and conclusions, because the Regulations treat originality in the results and conclusions as non-negotiable.
Second, check whether the report was generated with the correct exclusions applied. A report that includes your bibliography and properly attributed quotations is inflating your figure against the standard the Regulations describe.
Third, rewrite the flagged passages by reconstructing the idea in your own words and sentence structure rather than substituting synonyms. Word-swapping leaves the sentence architecture intact, which detection tools identify and examiners recognise immediately.
If your submission deadline is close, the practical sequence for fixing this is set out in the recovery guide on writing and revising doctoral documents for committee review, which covers how to restructure text under time pressure without introducing new problems.
Writing so that similarity is low because the work is yours
The reliable way to keep a similarity report clean is not editing at the end. It is writing from your own synthesis in the first place: reading several sources, forming your own account of what they collectively establish, and writing that account rather than paraphrasing any single one.
Tesify helps you build chapters from your own notes and framework so the prose is constructed rather than assembled, and keeps your citation practice consistent as the document grows. You remain the author, and you remain responsible for the integrity of every claim and citation.
Start writing your chapter in Tesify
Frequently asked questions
Is 10% the pass mark for a PhD thesis?
It is not a pass mark. The Regulations classify similarity up to 10% as Level 0, attracting no penalty. Your institution may apply a stricter internal threshold, and the nature of the overlap matters more than the number.
Does the similarity percentage include my references?
It should not. Clause 7 excludes references, bibliography, table of contents, preface and acknowledgements from the check. If your report includes them, the settings were not configured as the Regulations describe.
Are properly cited quotations counted?
Quoted work reproduced with necessary permission and attribution is excluded under Clause 7. That said, a thesis built largely from long quotations, even correctly attributed, raises a separate question about original contribution.
What is the fourteen-word rule?
The note to Clause 7 excludes common knowledge or coincidental terms up to fourteen consecutive words. It prevents standard phrasing and routine technical wording from being counted as plagiarism.
Can my registration really be cancelled?
Yes. For similarity above 60%, the Regulations state that the student’s registration for that programme shall be cancelled. This is the specified consequence at Level 3.
Do these rules apply to Master’s students too?
The Regulations address academic integrity across higher educational institutions and cover students, faculty, researchers and staff. The deposit obligation to INFLIBNET explicitly names Masters and research programme dissertations and theses.
Does self-plagiarism count?
Reusing your own previously published text without attribution is treated as a form of plagiarism in academic practice and will be flagged by detection tools. Cite your own earlier work as you would cite anyone else’s.
Will paraphrasing software solve a high similarity score?
It is a poor solution and often makes matters worse. Such tools frequently produce awkward or subtly incorrect phrasing while leaving the underlying structure recognisable, and you still have to defend every sentence in the viva. Rewrite from your understanding instead.
Who decides whether plagiarism occurred?
The Regulations provide for institutional academic integrity panels to examine cases and recommend action, with the institution’s head approving the outcome. The percentage triggers examination; a panel determines the finding.
Where can I read the Regulations myself?
They are published on the University Grants Commission website and in the Gazette of India Extraordinary, Part III, Section 4, notified in New Delhi on 23 July 2018. Reading Clauses 7 and 8 directly takes a few minutes and is worth doing before your final check.