Plagiarism check and reduction in Chennai

Anna University: the check runs on your supervisor’s login

The CFR plagiarism policy allows every supervisor to get login credentials for the similarity software. Synopsis, papers and thesis all go up through those credentials. The software named in the policy is Urkund (Ouriginal), which was the tool supplied nationally until 2023. Ask your supervisor which software the login opens now.

The policy also give a list of what is left out of the count. Five items matter most in practice.

• quoted material, when it is reproduced with permission or with attribution
• your reference list or bibliography, and front pages like contents, preface and acknowledgements
• standard symbols and equations, and generic terms, laws and principles
• earlier uploads of the same document, so that a second check does not match the thesis with itself
• your claimed papers, plus unclaimed ones that satisfy the conditions in clause 16.2

The last exclusion helps, but it comes with a condition. Clause 16.2 of the R2025 regulations does not allow publishing similar content in two or more journals, wholly or partly, and it treats this as self-plagiarism. Say you wrote two papers from one chapter with the same paragraphs in both. That is a problem under the clause, even with a low thesis score. Clause 17.5 also wants the similarity index page bound into the thesis, generated on authorised credentials.

Clause 23 gives the penalties, and they follow the UGC levels. Up to 10% there is no penalty. From 10% to 40% the scholar gets up to six months to submit a revised version. Above 40% the penalties become heavy very fast. A scholar found plagiarising is called to the Centre for Research for an enquiry.

University of Madras: the library certificate

As per clause 12.4 of the Madras regulations, you give the soft copy of your thesis to the University Library and they check it. The library then issues a certificate with the level of similarity. The thesis can be submitted if that level is acceptable as per the rules the Syndicate frames from time to time. No percentage is given in the regulations. Under clause 12.5, the Librarian at Chepauk and the other campus libraries give the application form and the current rules.

Some scholars are going by what a senior said three years back, but the Syndicate may have changed the figure after that. Get the current figure from library in the month you plan to submit. Getting the degree also does not finish the matter. As per clause 14.18, the Syndicate will take back the degree when any plagiarism or malpractice comes to light after the award also.

IIT Madras: no changes after the Turnitin check

At IIT Madras the full thesis is checked in Turnitin, as per the January 2021 guidelines. In the undertaking you agree that nothing will be changed after the check. Your guide also signs that the complete Turnitin report has been read. Whatever file went into Turnitin, that same file only you have to submit at the end.

So plan the work in a different order. Finish language editing, figure corrections and reference cleanup first, and keep Turnitin for the very end. Suppose you correct one typo later, then your thesis and your report no longer match.

M.G.R. Medical University: 15% and ten words in a row

The anti-plagiarism note of the M.G.R. Medical University applies to PhD scholars registered from July 2011, and it has two limits. Overall similarity should be 15% or less for a PhD, and 10% or less for a D.Sc. The second limit is on matching text that comes in one continuous run, and that run should not go beyond 10 words. The certificate is taken 45 to 60 days before submission. For a PhD the fee is ₹2,000, and the report goes in as the last page of the thesis.

Many of the scholar with a low overall score get caught by this ten-word rule. Take a methods section copied from a standard protocol. It may come to only 3% of the thesis, but every sentence in it can cross 10 words of matching text. In that case you have to write those passages again yourself and give the protocol as citation.

In SRMIST the synopsis goes through the university’s own software first, as per the 2023 regulations, and only after that the supervisor forwards it. There is no percentage written there as far as we read. Ask your department what limit they follow.

How it works from Chennai

Send us the complete similarity report as a PDF, and the thesis as a Word file. Tell us your university too. For the M.G.R. Medical University, mention how many days are left before your submission window.

We go through the report one source at a time and put every match into a group. Some matches only need a citation. Some need quotation marks. Some others are from your own claimed paper or are standard wording in your field. Whatever is left after this has to be properly rewritten. You get this as a page-wise list. Then we do the rewriting along with you, in your words, with proper citations. When you are ready, your supervisor, library or university runs the official check.

Paraphrasing tools we don’t use at all. Hiding text from the software with some trick is also something we will not do. Some traces of it stay in the file, and once the checker sees that, the problem is no more about a high score, it becomes a doubt on your honesty.