Search and Learn! Shodhganga to feature 5 lakh PhD research works

Reshma Shivdekar

The educational website ‘Shodhganga’ will be featuring more than 5 lakh academic works from MPhil and PhD researchers from the country. These academic works, which often get lost into oblivion in the shelves of universities and institutes, can now be accessed by researchers all around the world.

Pune University from Maharashtra has provided around 12,404 theses—the largest number in the country. Kolhapur University is also among the top 10 universities providing their research works. Mumbai University has made available around 7,000 theses dating back from 1930. The project ‘ShodhGanga’ has been launched by the Union Government’s Ministry of Education with the collaboration of around 750 universities. 

Despite directives from the University Grants Commission (UGC), universities had shown little interest in providing theses. Mumbai University, one of the three oldest universities, had made around 500 theses available online, which was two years ago. However, the work is picking up pace at the moment, and around 7 thousand research works are already up on the website, as stated to Lokmat by Dr Nandkishore Motewar, director of the Knowledge Resource Centre of the University. He also clarified that more theses will be uploaded by February. 

About Shodhganga 

• PhD theses are the result of thorough and immersive research on a specific subject, and oftentimes, post completion these works are lost in the archives of the university and institutes
• Shodhganga was created to make such valuable knowledge available globally
• UGC has made it mandatory for all universities to create electronic copies of their theses on Shodhganga 

Grinding Work 

• Firstly, every single page of the thesis is scanned 
• To make the digital copy readable and accessible, it has to be then converted into an OCR (Optical Character Reader). It is then uploaded on the website. 
• Converting older theses is proving especially difficult, but the task is underway 

Leading 10 Universities 

Anna, Chennai- 15, 466

Madras- 14,668

Kolkata- 14,098

Savitribai Phule, Pune- 12, 404

Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj- 10,152

Aligardh Muslim- 9,881

Babasaheb Ambedkar Bihar- 9, 675

Andhra- 9,559

Punjab- 8,911

Purvanchal- 8,903