A PhD thesis is submitted to Shodhganga by the university rather than the scholar: after the viva, the university’s Shodhganga coordinator uploads the final corrected thesis to Shodhganga, the national repository of Indian PhD theses run by the INFLIBNET Centre in Gandhinagar, an inter-university centre of the UGC. Every scholar meets it twice: once as a reader, searching it for related theses during the literature review, and once as an author, when the university deposits the finished thesis there.
This guide explains what Shodhganga and its companion Shodhgangotri are, what the UGC rules require, how deposit works in practice and what you need to prepare, and how to search Shodhganga well. The deposit procedure is run by each university, so treat the practical steps here as typical and confirm them with your university library or research cell. Last reviewed September 2026.
What Shodhganga and Shodhgangotri are
Shodhganga holds the full text of completed theses from universities that have signed an agreement (an MoU) with INFLIBNET. Theses are organised by university, then by department, and each thesis appears as a record with its title, researcher, guide, year, abstract and a set of PDF files, usually one per chapter. Anyone can read them free of charge, without logging in.
Shodhgangotri is the smaller companion repository for research in progress. It holds synopses approved at the time of PhD registration. Its purpose is to show who is already working on what, so that scholars and committees can avoid duplicated topics.
| Shodhganga | Shodhgangotri | |
|---|---|---|
| What it holds | Full text of completed, evaluated PhD theses (and some older MPhil dissertations) | Synopses and research proposals approved at PhD registration, for research still in progress |
| When your work goes in | After evaluation, before the degree is awarded | Soon after your synopsis is approved |
| Who deposits | Usually the university library or Shodhganga cell, through its coordinator | The scholar, supervisor or university, depending on the university’s practice |
| What it is useful for | Seeing how theses in your field are structured, finding Indian-context studies, instruments and data | Checking whether someone is already working on your topic before you register |
| Address | shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in | shodhgangotri.inflibnet.ac.in |
Both run on DSpace, the open-source repository software used by many university libraries. The interfaces are plain, and the sites can be slow at busy times, but the content is unique: for most Indian universities there is no other public copy of their theses.
What the UGC rules require
The UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedures for Award of Ph.D. Degree) Regulations, 2022 place the duty on the university, not on you. After the evaluation has been completed successfully, and before the award of the degree is announced, the degree-awarding institution must submit an electronic copy of the thesis to INFLIBNET for hosting, so that it is accessible to other higher education and research institutions. Earlier UGC regulations carried a similar requirement.
In practice this means:
- Deposit is not optional for a PhD awarded under the UGC regulations, though the timing and paperwork are set by your university.
- It happens after the viva, not at submission. The version that goes to Shodhganga should be the final, corrected thesis.
- Many universities link it to the degree. Some will not issue a provisional certificate or list you for convocation until the library confirms the deposit or you submit the required soft copy.
Separately, UGC’s 2018 regulations on academic integrity require a similarity check of the thesis before submission and an undertaking from the scholar. That check happens earlier and is covered in our guide to plagiarism limits by university. Where the deposit falls in the full sequence of PhD stages is shown in our PhD timeline guide.
How a thesis is deposited on Shodhganga
The details differ between universities, but the usual sequence is:
- You submit a soft copy of the final thesis to the university library, the Shodhganga cell or the research section, along with any form they require. Some universities collect it at thesis submission and replace it with the corrected version after the viva; others ask only after the viva.
- The university checks it. Library staff confirm that the file is complete and matches the approved thesis. Many universities split the PDF into chapter files at this stage, or ask you to do it.
- The university coordinator uploads it to Shodhganga under your university and department, with the metadata: title, your name, supervisor, department, year, keywords and abstract.
- The record goes live after INFLIBNET’s processing. The delay varies from weeks to many months, and you do not need to wait for it to receive your degree, unless your university says otherwise.
You do not usually upload anything to Shodhganga yourself. If anyone other than your own university asks you for a fee to “upload” your thesis to Shodhganga, check with your research cell before paying. Deposit is arranged by the university.
What to prepare
- A final PDF of the thesis after any corrections asked for at the viva, not the version sent to examiners.
- Fonts embedded and text selectable (not a scanned image), so the thesis can be searched and checked.
- No password, printing restriction or encryption on the PDF.
- Separate files for each part if your university asks for them: title page, certificates, abstract, contents, each chapter, references, appendices.
- The title exactly as registered, and your name and your supervisor’s name spelled as in university records.
- Any declaration or undertaking form your university requires for the deposit, signed.
- Personal data removed from appendices: participant names, phone numbers, signed consent forms, identifiable photographs.
- If a patent is being filed on your work, a written request to your research cell for a delay before the thesis is made public.
If you need a delay
Where a patent application or a commercial agreement is pending, some universities allow the public release of the thesis to be delayed for a limited period. There is no single national procedure for this, so raise it with your supervisor and research cell well before the viva, and get the decision in writing.
What happens after your thesis is on Shodhganga
Once your thesis is on Shodhganga, it is readable by anyone, including journal reviewers, similarity-checking systems and other scholars. Three consequences are worth knowing.
Similarity matches against your own thesis
If you later submit a journal paper based on a thesis chapter, a similarity report may match large parts of it to your Shodhganga thesis. Most journals accept that a paper derives from its author’s thesis, but they expect you to rewrite rather than copy, and to say in the cover letter that the paper is based on your thesis. Our guide to reading a Turnitin report explains how to interpret such matches. The simplest approach is to write papers from your chapters before or alongside the thesis, and to declare the thesis wherever a journal asks about prior dissemination.
Copyright
Deposit makes your thesis readable; it does not give anyone the right to copy it. Others may quote and cite it as they would any source. What rights you and your university hold is set by your university’s rules and whatever you signed at deposit, so keep a copy of that form.
Errors in the record
If your name, title or supervisor is wrong in the Shodhganga record, or a chapter file is missing, ask your university library to correct it. Corrections go through the university coordinator, not directly to INFLIBNET.
Searching Shodhganga for your literature review
For a scholar starting out, Shodhganga is one of the most useful and least used resources. Indian theses often contain exactly what international journals do not: Indian-context data, questionnaires already translated into regional languages, profiles of districts and industries, and literature from Indian journals that is hard to find elsewhere.
How to search
- Browse by university and department to see what has been done in your own department and how local theses are structured. This is the quickest way to learn your department’s unwritten conventions.
- Search by keyword, title, researcher or guide. Try several phrasings, including older terms for your topic, since titles from 2010 and titles from 2024 often use different words for the same thing.
- Use Google as a second route. Adding
site:shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.into a Google search sometimes finds theses that the internal search misses, because Google indexes the text inside the PDF chapters. - Read the right files. Each thesis is split into chapters. The abstract and the review of literature chapter are usually the most useful; the questionnaire is often in the appendix file.
Using what you find
Cite a Shodhganga thesis as an unpublished doctoral thesis, with the university and year, and the Shodhganga handle URL if your style allows. Treat it as you would any source that has been examined but not peer-reviewed in the journal sense. And never reuse text from it: your own thesis will be checked, and similarity software can match against theses as well as journals. Our guide on how to write a literature review covers how to fold these sources into your argument.
Before registering a topic, also search Shodhgangotri for synopses on the same subject. Finding that someone registered a near-identical topic two years ago is much better done before your committee meeting than during it. Our PhD synopsis guide covers the rest of that stage.
Sources
FAQ
Questions scholars ask
Do I upload my thesis to Shodhganga myself?
Usually not. You give the final soft copy to your university, and the university’s Shodhganga coordinator uploads it. Ask your library or research cell exactly what files and forms they need from you.
When will my thesis appear on Shodhganga?
After the viva and the university’s processing, and the delay can be several months. It depends on your university’s coordinator and INFLIBNET’s queue. In most universities the date it appears online does not change the date of your degree, though some wait for the library to confirm the deposit before issuing certificates.
My university is not on Shodhganga. What happens?
Most universities that award PhDs have signed the MoU, but not all have deposited every thesis. If yours has not joined, ask your library how it meets the UGC requirement; the deposit is the university’s responsibility, not yours.
Can I keep my thesis off Shodhganga?
Generally no, for a PhD awarded under the UGC regulations. Some universities allow a delay before public release where a patent or similar interest is pending. Ask your research cell early, and get any delay approved in writing.
Is a Shodhganga thesis a reliable source?
It has been evaluated by examiners, but quality varies widely. Read the methods critically, prefer peer-reviewed work where both exist, and use theses mainly for Indian-context evidence, instruments and background.
