State health university
KUHS: thesis format, and what only your department can tell you
KUHS is the clearest case in this register. Its postgraduate thesis rules are gazetted, which means they are specific, dated and checkable — so this page can tell you the margin, the page cap, the order of the chapters and the deadline, and tell you where each one comes from.
- Body
- State health university
- State or UT
- Kerala
- What this page has
- Format sourced · 11 sourced rows
The record
The record
Read in the body's own document
What is established, and where each line came from
Each line below was read in a document this body published, and the document is named beneath it. Check it rather than trusting us.
KUHS has its postgraduate thesis rules in a gazette notification, which is the strongest form these rules take anywhere we looked. The KUHS Post Graduate Thesis/Dissertation Regulations 2024 were made by the Academic Council on 27 February 2024, approved by the Governing Council on 1 March 2024, placed before the Senate on 23 March 2024, and published in the Kerala Gazette Extraordinary of 5 June 2024. They bind every postgraduate course affiliated to KUHS where a thesis is an eligibility condition for the university examination.
The protocol, carrying institutional ethics committee approval and the signatures of the guide, co-guide, head of department and head of institution, is submitted to the university through its online system within 6 months of the course commencing — 4 months for two-year courses. A grace period of 3 months with a late fee follows, the submission window then closes, and a candidate who misses it is liable to have the course extended by the number of days of the delay, with a fine.
A protocol approved by an ethics committee registered with the Department of Health Research or the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation may be approved by the university without further review. Other protocols may be sent to one methodology expert from the university's review panel, and a protocol modified after that review needs revised ethics committee approval before the study proceeds.
Format, stated exactly: plain white unlined bond paper of 75 to 81 gsm, A4 at 210 by 297 mm, erasable paper not permitted. Left margin 3.81 cm (1.5 inches), the other three 2.54 cm (1 inch). Times New Roman, Arial or Tahoma. Main text 12 point and not bold, footnotes 10 point, titles 14 point bold, subtitles 12 point bold. Line spacing 1.15 in the main text and single for long quotations and notes. Laser printing.
Roman numerals on the preliminary pages up to the first page of text, Arabic numerals on the text pages, placed consistently. A figure larger than a standard page is folded so that the 3.81 cm left margin stays free and the folded sheet is no larger than the page. One citation style throughout, Vancouver or another internationally accepted style, with references listed in the order they appear and anything consulted but not cited listed separately as a bibliography.
The maximum is 200 pages including the master sheet, appendix and addendum. There is no specified minimum. The abstract is a maximum of 500 words and carries at most 10 keywords, preferably drawn from MeSH.
Source: Regulations 2024, clause 19(l) and the abstract format
The order of the book is fixed: title page; declaration, bona fide certificates from the guide and endorsements from the head of department and head of institution; acknowledgements; abstract with keywords; table of contents; lists of tables, figures and annexures; definitions and abbreviations. Then the main text — introduction, research question, aims and objectives, hypothesis, review of literature, methodology, results, discussion, limitations and scope for future studies, conclusions and policy implications, summary. Then references, then annexures.
Source: Regulations 2024, clause 19, arrangement of sections
Three plagiarism-related certificates are named: a Plagiarism Verification certificate, a Self-Plagiarism Exclusion certificate and, where applicable, a Self-Plagiarism Co-authors certificate. The verification certificate has fields for the similarity index and the total word count, and the reviewing signatory certifies that the similarity is within acceptable norms. The regulations point to the university's plagiarism policy in force for the figure itself rather than fixing a percentage in the text.
Source: Regulations 2024, clause 19(m), 19(n) and the annexed certificates
Timing is defined from both ends. The research work, including data collection, analysis and writing up, is estimated to need a minimum of 6 months, and the thesis may be submitted only after at least 6 months from the university's approval of the protocol. It is submitted to the university 6 months before the expected date of the final examination, with the prescribed fee, as a soft copy in PDF, ODT, DOCX or DOC by email and on CD or DVD, with hard copies to the department. Submission complete in all aspects within the time limit is a condition of registering for the final examination.
Where the course regulations do not set their own procedure, three examiners assess: one from another institution affiliated to KUHS who was not the candidate's guide, and two from other universities. If two ask for changes, the resubmission is due within 30 days with fresh plagiarism certificates. If two reject it, resubmission is ordinarily within 30 days and is assessed as a fresh thesis. The final examination hall ticket is issued only after the thesis is accepted.
What the regulations deliberately leave to others: the fee amounts, the similarity percentage, and anything the course regulations cover instead. The saving clause sends every silence to the course regulations and then to the regulatory authority. So the numbers above are stable and the money and the percentage are not — confirm those two with your college.
What we read, and when
Read in full on 10 September 2026 and re-checked clause by clause on 11 September 2026: the KUHS Post Graduate Thesis/Dissertation Regulations 2024 as published in the Kerala Gazette Extraordinary No. 1786, Vol. XIII, of 5 June 2024, carrying notification No. 10155/2022/AC1/Gen.A2/KUHS (2) dated 27 February 2024.
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
Whether your own course regulations set a thesis procedure of their own, because clause 21 lets those override the general evaluation route.
The current fee for protocol submission, late submission and thesis assessment, which the regulations leave to the university to fix from time to time.
The similarity percentage the university's plagiarism policy currently treats as acceptable, since the regulations point to the policy rather than naming a number.
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.
Whether your dissertation is submitted to the university directly or through your college, and who signs it on the way.
Whether the university runs its own protocol review in addition to your institutional ethics committee, and how long that review takes.
Ask for these by name
The KUHS Post Graduate Thesis/Dissertation Regulations 2024 — ask by that name, and check whether an amendment has followed.
Your own course regulations, to see whether they set a thesis procedure that displaces the general one.
The university's plagiarism policy in force, for the similarity figure the certificates are signed against.
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 KUHS, 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 Kerala University of Health Sciences, Thrissur 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: KUHS thesis format · Revision 2 · Last reviewed
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