Institute of national importance
AIIMS: thesis format, and what only your department can tell you
Each AIIMS is its own degree-awarding institute, so there is no state university format over you and no single AIIMS format either. We have not established any individual institute's, and this page will not imply that one AIIMS speaks for the rest.
- Body
- Institute of national importance
- What this page has
- Checklist only
The record
The record
What we could not establish
We have not established this format
This page carries no format figures, because none reached us from a document this body published. That sentence is the page's most useful one.
Our own reading · not a citation
Read the name on this page carefully, because it is doing less work than it looks. AIIMS is not one institution. Each AIIMS is separately established and each awards its own degrees, so there is no single AIIMS thesis format and a format circulated at one of them is not evidence of the rule at another. Combined with the fact that these institutes award degrees directly rather than through a state health university, that leaves no state examination branch anywhere in your chain — which is worth knowing mainly because it tells you which questions are pointless. Your state's health university does not set your format and cannot tell you what it is.
Our own reading · not a citation
The practical consequence: your format is an internal document held by your own institute's academic section and your department, and we have no way to know from outside which version yours is working to. This is the one page in the register where we would push back on the instinct to search for the answer. Ask the academic section, in writing, and ask for the date.
Not established
We have not established the thesis format of any individual AIIMS. No readable document setting it out has reached us from the body's own website — the record beneath this section says what we checked and when. That is a statement about our search and not about the body: assume the document exists, ask your department for it by name, and work from the copy they hand you.
That paragraph is the same on every entry in this register where we established nothing. We would rather repeat one honest sentence than write a different-sounding one per university about a thing we do not know.
What we read, and when
Checked on 10 September 2026. No readable thesis format document reached us from aiims.edu. The points about degree-awarding status and about each AIIMS being separately established are our own description of how these institutes are constituted, marked as ours on the page rather than presented as citations.
A figure that is not on this page is not a figure we are withholding. It is one we could not read in a published document, and printing it anyway would cost you a reprint at best. How this register is built.
The floor
The floor
Regardless of the template
What applies whatever your format says
Four instruments decide the substance of a postgraduate thesis in India. A local format decides how it is typed.
Whatever your university's template says, the Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023[1] sit under it. In force from 1 January 2024, they keep the thesis compulsory for every broad and super-specialty postgraduate, have it assessed within the practical and viva examination, and have it judged by an external examiner from outside the state. They also require one research activity, a research methodology course and GCP training before the final examination. A university format can be stricter than that. It cannot release you from it.
One limit on that, if your degree is an MDS. Those regulations are the National Medical Commission's and they govern postgraduate medical education. Dental postgraduate education has its own regulator and its own instrument, and we do not state here what that instrument requires, because we have not read it for you. Ask your department which regulation your dissertation is assessed under, by name — the answer should not be the NMC's.
Ethics comes before everything, including the format. Institutional Ethics Committee approval must precede any data collection under the national ethical guidelines[5], informed consent is mandatory, and a prospective interventional study is registered with the Clinical Trials Registry of India. No amount of reformatting repairs a dataset collected before approval was granted, which is why this is the first date to fix and never the last.
On similarity, most health universities apply the convention established by the 2018 academic integrity regulations[3]: below 10% treated as acceptable, with graded penalties above it. Which tool produces the report, and what is excluded from the count, is set by your institution rather than nationally. We work to whatever threshold your institution publishes, and to the under 10% convention where it publishes none.
And authorship does not vary at all. You satisfy the ICMJE criteria[4] and we do not. Mentoring, editing, statistics and compliance review belong in your acknowledgements; our name appears nowhere in your author line. That holds at every body in this register.
The checklist
The checklist
Ask, do not assume
What to confirm with your own department
Take this list to your guide or the postgraduate section and come away with written answers. Every item on it changes the document you produce.
Confirm before you write the methods chapter
12 items
The exact document and its number — a direction, ordinance, regulation or circular — under which your dissertation format is issued, and whether a newer one has replaced it since your batch joined.
The deadline for submitting the synopsis or protocol, counted from your date of joining, and whether a late window exists and what it costs.
The deadline for submitting the dissertation itself, and whether it is fixed to a calendar date or to a number of months before your examination.
Page or word limits, and whether references, tables, the master chart and annexures count towards them.
Paper size, font, font size, line spacing and the four margins, including the wider margin left for binding.
Binding type and cover colour, and the exact wording and layout the title page must carry.
How many hard copies go to the department, how many to the university, and whether a soft copy is required and in which file format.
Which certificates must be bound in: the candidate's declaration, the guide's and co-guide's certificates, the head of department's and head of institution's endorsements, the ethics committee approval and the similarity report.
Which similarity-checking tool your institution runs, which percentage it treats as acceptable, and what is excluded from the count.
The referencing style, and whether the university names one style or accepts any consistent international style.
Which internal committee issues the thesis format at your institute, since it is not a state health university and does not take its format from one.
Whether the institute's own academic section, rather than a university examination branch, receives the submission.
Ask for these by name
The institute's current thesis guidelines for your programme, from the academic section.
The thesis submission deadline relative to your examination, as the academic section holds it.
An accepted thesis from your own department, to see the format as your examiners expect it.
Why written answers
A format passed on verbally between batches drifts. The margin survives and the page cap does not, or a certificate that was added last year never reaches you. Ask for the document, note its number and its date, and keep it. If your department cannot produce one, that is itself the answer, and the thing to do is get the current circular from the university rather than copy a senior's thesis.
Our part
Our part
How MDThesis works with this
We format to the document you bring
Your department signs your submission, so your department's copy of the format is the one we build to.
On the first call we ask for two things: the current format document for AIIMS, and a title page your own department has already approved. The draft is set to those from the first chapter rather than reformatted at the end, which is when a page cap becomes expensive. Where the two disagree, your department's copy wins. Where your university is stricter than any convention, the stricter rule is the one we follow.
The checklist above is not homework we have set you. Your mentor goes through it with you and the answers become dated rows on your record, with the deadlines counted from the dates your own body uses. An MDSoftune word-level uniqueness report ships with every draft version, so similarity is visible while a chapter is still in draft rather than at submission. We do not operate the checker your institution runs and cannot predict the figure it will produce.
What we do not do: write your thesis, promise a grade or an approval, or put our name anywhere in it. You are the author. How the work is actually divided.
Non-affiliation statement
MDThesis works to these published standards. It is not affiliated with, approved by, accredited by or endorsed by any of the bodies that issue them, nor by any university. Naming All India Institute of Medical Sciences on this page means we have read or looked for its published thesis rules. It does not mean the body has reviewed, approved or endorsed this page or this practice.
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Document: AIIMS thesis format · Revision 2 · Last reviewed
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