Now we are in a position to introduce the “Five Conditions Ph.D. Rule of UGC” using which a Ph.D.
scholar can do self-assessment and his supervisor can quantitatively compute and take decision on whether the work of his Ph.D. scholar is sufficient and worthwhile in all respect for submission now in thesis form.
Suppose that on completion of research work for a period of three to four years, a Ph.D. scholar himself feels that it is the time for submission of his thesis. Now it is the Supervisor’s intellectual and academic decision to ensure that the work of his scholar done so far is really upto the mark, really in compliance with the approved Ph.D. proposal and really sufficient for submission to the university for evaluation.
But, in order to bring an amount of homogeneity among the class of all supervisors across the country while taking such an important academic and intellectual decision, we propose a consolidated model for UGC which is a complete and sound set of conditions to be mandatorily satisfied by the research scholars as a minimum eligibility norm for submission of thesis. But mere fulfillment of the minimum eligibility norm does not provide any right to a scholar to take decision for submission of his Ph.D. thesis.
The fulfilment is a norm for self-assessment and hence for self-satisfaction only for the scholar, and may be reported to his supervisor as an information just. Once the minimum eligibility norm is fulfilled, it is now the supervisor to take an appropriate decision whether or not to allow the scholar to submit his thesis. This set constitute an important and very useful rule called by “Five Conditions Ph.D. Rule of UGC” which consists of five number of almost independent conditions. Out of these five conditions, the first four conditions are to be satisfied by the Ph.D. scholar whereas the last (i.e. 5th) condition is to be satisfied by the concerned university just after the submission of the thesis, but overall check and verification is to be done by the supervisor before allowing him to submit the thesis.
The first four necessary conditions which must be mandatorily fulfilled by a Ph.D. scholar before a supervisor considers to think whether to allow the scholar to submit his thesis or not, are as mentioned below:
1. Condition-1: Indexed Journal Condition (IJ Condition) 2. Condition-2: TSI Condition
3. Condition-3: Compliance of Ph.D. Proposal Condition (CPP Condition)
“Theory of IRE with (α,β,γ) Norm”
4. Condition-4: Peripheral Satisfaction Condition (PS Condition) and, if the thesis be submitted by the scholar (on being allowed by the supervisor), then the fifth condition stated below must be considered and must be fulfilled by the concerned university:
5. Condition-5: Excellent Evaluation Condition (EE Condition).
The above five conditions are explained below:
Condition-1: “Indexed Journal Condition” (IJ Condition)
This condition requires that the publications of the Ph.D. scholar must be in indexed and sub-indexed journals only. According to this condition, publications in non-indexed journals will not be considered by the concerned university. Because such a publication does not add any value to the IFS of the scholar.
(We do not want to mean that a publication if accomplished on payment of publication-charge will be necessarily a poor publication. Such kind of concept, if any, is surely a wrong concept. A number of excellent quality journals of good IF need to generate funds for their noble work! Even, it is fact that top quality journals/transactions of IEEE/ACM too asks for payment of publication-charge in some cases to publish the accepted papers). Instead, it is the amount of IF or PIF of the indexed or sub-indexed journal which reflects and ensures the quality of publications.
Unpublished works of the scholar or the materials of publications of the scholar in journals which are neither indexed nor sub-indexed or materials of publications in the Proceedings of the International Conferences etc. may be added in the Ph.D. thesis, but only for the sake of completeness and soundness of the content of the thesis, if required. However, a good supervisor will always discourage the scholars to communicate any research work to non-indexed journals or to poor quality journals, but surely he will encourage to participate and contribute in good international conferences which is a good academic value addition for any beginner in research activities or for any level of researchers in fact. To enhance the amount of compliance with the approved Ph.D. proposal, a research scholar may include in his thesis the publications of him made in the Proceedings of the International Conferences/Seminars for which although there may not be any IF/PIF score. The IJ condition is to be checked by the concerned supervisor prior to communicating any work to a journal for publication, because a Ph.D. scholar being a beginner in research may commit mistakes initially.
Condition-2: “TSI Condition”
For submission of Ph.D. thesis, one of the necessary conditions is that the Ph.D. scholar must fulfill the TSI condition which is just a mathematical equation as mentioned below
PWI ≥ TSI
where the PWI is the ‘PWI of the scholar’, and the TSI is the corresponding ‘department TSI’ for the concerned university or a valid TSI personally decided by the supervisor. But this is just one of the necessary conditions, not a sufficient condition. Clearly, this condition for a scholar is to be checked by his supervisor.
A high class Professor (Supervisor) may have his own personal high TSI value for his subject. He
“Theory of IRE with (α,β,γ) Norm”
of him to submit the Ph.D. thesis to the university. Even a Professor may apply different valid TSIs by his own choice to different scholars of him, on case to case basis.
Condition-3: “Compliance of Ph.D. Proposal Condition” (CPP Condition)
For every Ph.D. research scholar, there is a ‘Ph.D. Proposal’ approved by the BRS of the concerned university with which he began the research work for his Ph.D. degree. The Ph.D. scholar has to work on each and every item of the Ph.D. Problem Statements whatever promised in his ‘Ph.D. Proposal’.
He has to solve the Ph.D. proposal completely and correctly. Even though the IJ Condition and TSI condition be fulfilled at some point of time, it may happen that the work done so far is not providing the complete solution of the ‘Problem Statement’ as mentioned in the ‘Ph.D. Proposal’ or may be that the part of the work done is not in compliance with the approved Ph.D. Proposal even if the research work done be excellent. Such cases may be termed as non-compliance of the ‘Ph.D. Proposal’ even though the work done so far could be excellent in quality and quantity both. Under such situation, a scholar is not allowed to submit his thesis. It is mandatory to complete the work from A to Z as per the approved Proposal. This condition is thus called by “Compliance of Ph.D. Proposal Condition” or “CPP Condi- tion”. This condition is to be carefully checked and adjudged by the concerned supervisor, and in case the supervisor feels that this condition is not fulfilled then the supervisor will not allow the Ph.D. scholar to submit his thesis.
One of the major demerits and faults of the existing evaluation system of Ph.D. thesis in India in most of the universities is that the Evaluators (external) of the Ph.D. thesis do not check or do not get scope to check the CPP condition. The evaluators take it granted by default without looking at the ‘Ph.D.
Proposal’ based on the fact that ‘the supervisor has allowed the submission of the thesis’.
Condition-4: “Peripheral Satisfaction Condition” (PS Condition)
This is an overall compliance condition, regarding other properties of the scholar including the character, behavior, whether defaulter in the university, whether attendance/meetings are fulfilled as per instruc- tions, any indiscipline cases against if any, etc. and hence it is not a well-defined or precise condition.
This condition is to be checked by the supervisor by his best intellectual judgment because he must have overall satisfaction over the scholar’s day-to-day records, activities and performance. Let us call this condition to be “Peripheral Satisfaction Condition” or “PS Condition”.
Condition-5: “Excellent Evaluation Condition” (EE Condition)
This is the condition to be fulfilled by the concerned university once the thesis is submitted by the scholar. We propose that this condition may be finally monitored by the “Ministry of HRD (MHRD)” to countercheck whether ‘excellent evaluation’ has been done as per our definition presented below. This condition is one of the most important conditions of the ‘Five Conditions Ph.D. Rule of UGC’.
Before explaining the “Excellent Evaluation Condition” (EE condition), we introduce a kind of important certificate called by the ‘Thesis Submission Certificate’. On submission of the thesis, the Controller of Examination of the university will issue a simple provisional thesis submission certificate to the scholar which he keeps for his own record. This certificate must mention that it is ‘provisional’, not final. The final ‘Thesis Submission Certificate’ he will get from the university while he gets the
“Theory of IRE with (α,β,γ) Norm”
Ph.D. degree certificate. The scholar must retain the ‘Thesis Submission Certificate’ along with his Ph.D.
degree certificate as a very important document for his career, job, promotion, etc. This certificate will carry a good information about the scholar for his future career, as well as to all the recruiters of him in future interview/selection board. Thus the initial ‘Thesis Submission Certificate’ is always provisional, not final. In few cases there could be more than one, step-wise updated, provisional certificates; but the final one is unique which is an important certificate to the scholar for his life time.
Thesis Submission Certificate
In our ‘Five Conditions Ph.D. Rule of UGC’ introduced here, the Thesis Submission Certificate is a Certificate mentioning the value of the ‘university TSI’ and the value of the ‘PWI of the scholar’ as on the date of submission/resubmission of the thesis, as per following format (Table 4).
A copy of this certificate will be forwarded to each of the external and internal evaluators while forwarding the thesis for evaluation. However, in case of officially resubmission of the thesis, the cer- tificate may be updated accordingly by the Controller of Examination by updating the latest value of the PWI of the scholar. The updated/revised version of this certificate will be forwarded to the evaluator who re-evaluates the thesis (i.e. if such a situation arises). The certificate gets finally frozen on the day of the Viva-Voce while he defends the thesis. The final version of the Thesis Submission Certificate is issued to the scholar by the Controller of Examination on successful defend of the thesis by the scholar, not prior to that.
The EE Condition consists of two parts as explained below: -
Table 4.
Date of Issue of this certificate Department/Centre
Name of the Ph.D. Scholar Supervisor
Co-supervisor(s) Title of the thesis Date of Registration
Date of submission of the thesis
Date of Re-submission of the thesis (if applicable) PWI of the scholar
University TSI Any other information Comment (if any)
Signature of the Controller of Examination
“Theory of IRE with (α,β,γ) Norm”
Part-1: Evaluation by (α,β,γ) Normed Type-1 Experts
A submitted thesis should be evaluated by at least three evaluators who must be (α,β,γ) Normed Type-1 Experts for a suitable value of (α,β,γ) as imposed by the concerned University in the Ph.D. bye-laws.
Obviously, it could be different for different departments (subjects). The thesis (along with the interim Thesis Submission Certificate, the revised version if the case be) is to be forwarded to the evaluators providing at least two months’ time for evaluation.
Note: The notion of ‘(α,β,γ) Normed Type-1 Expert’ is introduced here in the next section.
Part-2: Fuzzy Evaluation Method
While evaluating a Ph.D. thesis (or a Master thesis or a Project dissertation etc.), most of the judgment parameters are not precise parameters but fuzzy parameters. Consequently, the existing classical evalu- ation method is an obsolete method and does not provide a complete and fair justice to the evaluation of the thesis. The Fuzzy Evaluation Method is a soft-computing method for evaluation of a Ph.D. thesis (or a Master thesis or a Project dissertation etc.), where judgment parameters are answered not only by subjective comments but also awarding fuzzy numbers (fuzzy marks) and/or awarding value (member- ship value) in the closed interval [0,1], by the best intellectual judgment of the appointed (α,β,γ) Normed Type-1 Expert. For giving the final comment by the concerned (α,β,γ) Normed Type-1 Expert, the integration of all the intellectual comments is done using fuzzy mathematics and of course according to all the other instructions laid down by the concerned university.
An excellent and very precise ‘FUZZY EVALUATION FORMAT’ for evaluation-report is to be designed (could be different for different subjects) by UGC, to be adopted as a common FORMAT across all the universities. No university in the country is allowed to use any other format except the common UGC format for evaluation of any Ph.D. thesis. The format is to be framed by partitioning the global job of evaluation into n number of sub-jobs on the basis of various well defined attributes and parameters so as to cover all aspects of judgment of a thesis by the evaluators who are (α,β,γ) Normed Type-1 Experts. Although the format is to be very precise, but the evaluation is to be done using fuzzy logic wherever crisp logic fails (as per prescribed instructions printed on the format). The objective for using fuzzy theory in evaluation is that instead of applying classical two valued logic, the evaluator has to use the notion of fuzzy numbers (fuzzy marks) and/or membership values lying in the closed interval [0,1] to judge the strength/weakness of the thesis at each and every prescribed attribute or parameter.
The UGC prescribed format for fuzzy evaluation will have a number of crisp as well as fuzzy attributes, and could have different designs for different faculties like: Engineering, Science, Arts, Humanities, Medicine, Law, Drama, Music, Library Science, etc. We propose that all these formats be standard- ized and approved by the “Ministry of HRD (MHRD)” applicable across of the country, by a common format but could be different for different faculties, by a common set of rules, by a common method of integration to award total final score.
As mentioned earlier, in order to fulfill the EE Condition of the ‘Five Conditions Ph.D. Rule of UGC’, the evaluators must be (α,β,γ) Normed Type-1 Experts for a suitable value of (α,β,γ) as imposed by the concerned university in its Ph.D. bye-laws, different for different departments (subjects).
But in reality and quit obviously, many of the Sr. Professors or Professors of many faculties (say, of Arts, Humanities, Drama, Music, etc.) and many of the (α,β,γ) Normed Type-1 Experts may not be
“Theory of IRE with (α,β,γ) Norm”
aware of the subjects like fuzzy mathematics and fuzzy evaluation method. We strongly propose that, analogous to the existing good practice of FDP Programmes (Faculty Development Programmes), the top class institutes and high graded Govt. Universities could conduct an advanced type of Orientation Programmes called by “Fuzzy Evaluation Training Programme (FETP)” for the experts only. In such FETP, a team of specialized subject experts (here subject is: “Evaluation & Judgment of academic ma- terials and quality”) sponsored by the “Ministry of HRD (MHRD)” will counsel the present prospective (α,β,γ) Normed Experts to become excellent fuzzy evaluators for the country.
Since the inception of fuzzy theory (Zadeh, 1965) whose 50 years has been recently celebrated in 2015 by the world scientists, an important path-breaking result of Soft Computing is reported in (Biswas, 2015c) which justifies that ‘Fuzzy Theory’ is not appropriate for large size fuzzy problems if we are in quest of good and reliable results. Consequently, imprecise problems need to be dealt with a very care- ful choice of an appropriate soft-computing theory by the concerned decision makers. Although a huge volume of literature has been published by a large number of scientists in a large number of journals/
books during the last five decades, but the fact established in (Biswas, 2015c) cannot be ignored, in par- ticular if it is the case of soft data. However, there are few cases (Biswas, 2015c, 2015d, 2015e), which are not of large data, where Fuzzy Theory can play dominantly compared to any other theory of soft computing. Considering all the above facts, it is certain that in the above Fuzzy Evaluation Method the evaluation will not be effected owing to the serious demerit of fuzzy set theory as rigorously justified in (Biswas, 2015c), because of the reason that the decision makers are true experts for evaluation by their best possible judgment. There should not be any confusion on this issue.
We are sure that excellent evaluators (for evaluation of Ph.D. thesis) can be attracted if an appropriate fee/honorarium be paid to them, as the job of evaluation is a very tough academic job which needs high quality of academic and intellectual ability and precious time. Unfortunately, in many cases in Indian universities, the evaluation of Ph.D. thesis is done by ordinary quality evaluators (even though they are Full-Professors by designation, even though they are having long experience which are rich in terms of number of years only). We propose that each of the (α,β,γ) Normed Type-1 Experts doing fuzzy evalua- tion of Ph.D. thesis be paid a good amount of evaluation-fees which could be equal to one-month salary of the evaluator. It is not the amount of fees to be eyed upon, but the excellent quality of evaluation is to be highly expected without any compromise.
“THEORY OF IRE WITH (α,β,γ) NORM”
In the previous section so far we have discussed about those researchers who are Ph.D. scholars, and about monitoring their time to time research performance by a kind of continuous self-evaluation method. The
“Five Conditions Ph.D. Rule of UGC” is applicable to Ph.D. scholars only, not to any other researchers.
In this section we present a new theory called by the “Theory of IRE with (α,β,γ) Norm” which provides theories and excellent methods applicable to any researcher, be him a fresh Ph.D. or a senior researcher of 5-10 years’ research experience or researchers of 10-20/30/40… or more years of research experi- ence. By researcher we mean Ph.D. scholars, Professors, teachers and Scientists, etc. The “Theory of IRE with (α,β,γ) Norm” can make a revolutionary improvement of the present system of HEM in any country. We first of all introduce few important indices which are the key items in the Theory of IRE.