Is a review of literature the same as a literature review?

Yes. Review of literature, often shortened to RoL, is the phrase commonly used in Indian university formats, synopsis templates and thesis chapter titles. The task is the same as a literature review elsewhere: synthesize earlier work and show the gap your research addresses.

How long should the review of literature be in a PhD synopsis?

Check your university's template, because limits differ. A pre-submission synopsis can be tight: the Central University of Tamil Nadu, for example, limits the whole synopsis to 12 pages and no more than 15 references. In either case, select the most relevant studies instead of listing everything you have read.

How many studies should a synopsis review cite?

The UGC regulations cited in this guide set no number, and universities differ. Cite enough well-chosen studies to show that you know the field and that the gap is real, and follow any cap in your university's format. The Central University of Tamil Nadu, for example, caps a pre-submission synopsis at 15 references. Synopses from your own discipline in INFLIBNET's ShodhGangotri repository are worth looking at for what departments have accepted.

What is the difference between the registration synopsis and the pre-submission synopsis?

The registration synopsis is a research proposal. You present it to the department's research committee early in the programme, and its review of literature justifies the proposed work. The pre-submission synopsis comes at the end. It summarizes the completed thesis, including the literature reviewed, methods, findings and publications, and is submitted after the pre-submission seminar.

What similarity percentage is allowed in a PhD thesis in India?

Under the UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018, similarity up to 10 percent is treated as Level 0 with no penalty. Levels 1 to 3 cover 10 to 40 percent, 40 to 60 percent, and above 60 percent, with increasing penalties. Quoted work reproduced with permission or attribution, references and bibliography, and generic terms, laws and standard symbols and equations are excluded from the check. Universities may set stricter limits, so check yours.

Can I reuse my synopsis review in the thesis chapter?

Yes. It is your own unpublished work, and the thesis chapter normally grows out of it. Update it, because a review written at registration will be out of date by the time you submit. If parts of your review were published as a review article, cite that publication and follow your university's rule on reusing your own published text.

Review of Literature for a PhD Synopsis and Thesis in India

Indian universities generally use the phrase review of literature, often abbreviated RoL, for what other systems call a literature review. A PhD scholar writes it at least twice: once in the synopsis and once as a thesis chapter. This guide covers both, with the conventions that are specific to India.

Where the review of literature appears

Stage	Document	What the review does
Registration, after coursework	Synopsis or research proposal, presented to the departmental research committee	Establishes the research gap and justifies the objectives
During the programme	Progress reports to the Research Advisory Committee	Updated as the field moves
End of the programme	Pre-submission synopsis	Brief summary of literature reviewed, within a strict page limit
Thesis	Chapter 2, Review of Literature	Full critical review

The UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of Ph.D. Degree) Regulations, 2022 set the framework: coursework of at least 12 credits that includes a research and publication ethics course, a Research Advisory Committee that reviews the research proposal and progress, a plagiarism check before submission, and deposit of an electronic copy of the thesis with INFLIBNET. Everything more detailed, including the synopsis format, comes from your university's own PhD ordinance.

Two documents are called "synopsis"

This causes real confusion, so check which one your department means.

Registration synopsis (research proposal). Written for registration. The Sant Gadge Baba Amravati University science and technology template, for example, asks for a critical review of literature, research gaps in prior work, and the objectives that follow from them. INFLIBNET runs ShodhGangotri alongside Shodhganga as one of its institutional repositories, so it is worth searching for examples from your own discipline; check on the site itself what it currently holds.

Pre-submission synopsis. Written when the thesis is nearly complete. The Central University of Tamil Nadu regulations describe it as containing the thesis title, objectives, literature reviewed, methodology, analysis, results and discussion, in not more than 12 pages, with no more than 15 references.

The rest of this guide focuses on the registration synopsis and the thesis chapter, where the review carries the argument.

How to structure the review in a synopsis

A pattern you can adapt to your template:

Opening paragraph. Define the scope: topic, period covered, and the databases searched.
Thematic sections. Themes drawn from your variables or sub-problems. Within each theme, move from foundational work to the most recent.
International and national status. Some templates ask for this explicitly. Sant Gadge Baba Amravati University's science and technology template titles the section "Critical Review of Non-Patent and Patent Literature till date (National Status and International Status)". If your template does, show what has been done abroad, what has been done in India, and how the Indian context differs.
Research gap. State it directly, then link each gap to an objective.

Avoid the chronological list in which every paragraph begins with an author and year and reports one study. That format hides the gap instead of exposing it.

The research gap table

Some universities require a table. The SGBAU template asks scholars to tabulate the journals searched and the articles analysed, with the gap identified from each, and to name the type of gap. Its list includes a methodology void or conflict, contradictory or non-matching evidence, a knowledge void, an action-knowledge conflict, an evaluation void, a theory application void, an empirical gap, and under-researched or unexplored sub-groups.

A version you can adapt. The three rows use real, published studies on microcredit and self-help groups, described from their abstracts, with full references at the end of this guide:

Author, year	Journal	Context and method	Key finding	Limitation or gap	Gap type
Banerjee, Duflo, Glennerster & Kinnan (2015)	American Economic Journal: Applied Economics	Randomized evaluation of group-lending microcredit, 52 treatment neighbourhoods, Hyderabad	Business investment rose; no significant change in health, education or women's empowerment	Urban setting, one lender. Finding on empowerment differs from SHG studies	Contradictory evidence
Swain & Wallentin (2009)	International Review of Applied Economics	Quasi-experimental household data, five Indian states, 2000 and 2003, Self Help Group members	Significant increase in women's empowerment among SHG members, none in the control group	Data end in 2003. Different programme model from commercial microcredit	Contradictory evidence
Banerjee, Karlan & Zinman (2015)	American Economic Journal: Applied Economics	Overview of six randomized evaluations in six countries	Consistent pattern of modestly positive, but not transformative, effects	Covers lender microcredit, not India's SHG bank-linkage model	Knowledge void

The gap and gap-type columns are this guide's illustration of how to fill them in, not a published assessment of these studies. Check your template for the journal-indexing column it requires, and verify each journal's indexing yourself.

Then turn the table into a statement:

Research gap. The studies reviewed disagree on whether microfinance changes women's empowerment in India. A randomized evaluation of group lending in Hyderabad found no significant change (Banerjee, Duflo, et al., 2015), while a quasi-experimental study of Self Help Group members in five states found a significant increase between 2000 and 2003 (Swain & Wallentin, 2009). The two studies differ in programme model, setting and design, so the disagreement is unresolved. The proposed study examines women's household decision-making among SHG members using [your design and setting].
Objective 1: To measure change in women's household decision-making among SHG members over [period].

This example rests on three studies so that every statement in it can be checked. Your own gap statement must rest on the full set of studies you reviewed.

Note the citation form. Two of the studies in the table are 2015 papers with Banerjee as first author, so a plain "Banerjee et al., 2015" would be ambiguous. APA 7 handles this in Section 8.18: where citations of works with three or more authors shorten to the same form, write out as many names as you need to tell them apart, then abbreviate the rest to "et al." Hence "Banerjee, Duflo, et al., 2015".

Each objective should be traceable to a row in the table. For a fuller method, see how to find research gaps.

Expanding the synopsis into Chapter 2

Keep the thematic skeleton and deepen each theme. Evaluate methods and samples, and go beyond reporting findings.
Add the theoretical or conceptual framework if your format places it in this chapter.
Re-run your searches so that literature published since registration is included.
Close the chapter with a summary of gaps that leads into your objectives and methodology.
If you published a review article during the programme, cite it and follow your university's policy on reusing published text.

Our PhD literature review planning guide covers scheduling this work across the programme.

Similarity rules and writing in your own words

The UGC's 2022 PhD regulations require institutions to use software that detects plagiarism, and the scholar submits an undertaking that the thesis is free of plagiarism. The UGC's 2018 academic integrity regulations define four levels:

Level	Similarity	Consequence for a thesis
0	Up to 10%	None
1	Above 10% to 40%	Submit a revised script within a set period of up to 6 months
2	Above 40% to 60%	Debarred from submitting a revised script for one year
3	Above 60%	Registration cancelled

The review of literature is the chapter that stays closest to other people's text, so it needs the most care. Take notes in your own words while reading, write from the notes and not from the PDF, and cite every idea. Running copied text through a paraphrasing tool does not make it your own work. For sources surfaced by AI tools, see how to cite sources you found through AI tools and our AI-assisted research ethics guide.

Where to find sources

Shodhganga. INFLIBNET's repository of Indian theses. Useful for national status and for checking whether your topic has already been done.
ShodhGangotri. INFLIBNET's second repository alongside Shodhganga. Search it for synopses and work in progress in your discipline.
e-ShodhSindhu and One Nation One Subscription. Consortium access to subscription journals through your institution's library. Ask your librarian what your institution receives.
Scopus and Web of Science. Some templates restrict which journals you may review. SGBAU's accepts only work published in journals listed in SCI/SCIE, the Scopus source list, the Web of Science Core Collection or the UGC-CARE list. Ask your supervisor which standard your department currently applies.
Patent databases. Science and technology templates may require a patent review; the SGBAU template points to Google Patents Advanced Search for this. The Indian Patent Office's own public patent search (iprsearch.ipindia.gov.in) is free as well.
Wonders. One search across 320M+ scholarly works from OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar, plus Google Patents, with a Boolean builder, a year filter, and an Organize view for grouping papers by theme. Add "India" to a query to separate national from international work. It is a paid research workspace with a 14-day trial and no free plan, and it does not write the review for you.

Citation style

The UGC regulations cited here do not prescribe a citation style, so universities and departments choose. Our guides cover APA, MLA, IEEE and Vancouver. Use the one named in your PhD ordinance or thesis format and apply it consistently in both the synopsis and the thesis.

Checklist before you submit the synopsis review

The review states a gap and does not only summarize studies one by one.
Each objective follows from a stated gap.
National and international work are both covered where the template asks for both.
Sources meet your template's rule on acceptable journals.
Recent literature is included.
The reference list and the in-text citations match.

References

University Grants Commission. (2022). UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of Ph.D. Degree) Regulations, 2022. https://www.ugc.gov.in/pdfnews/0909572_Minimum-Standards-and-Procedure-for-Award-of-PhD-Degree.pdf
University Grants Commission. (2018). UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018. https://www.ugc.gov.in/pdfnews/7771545_academic-integrity-Regulation2018.pdf
Central University of Tamil Nadu. (2023). Degree of Doctor of Philosophy regulations 2022. https://cutn.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/CUTN_PhD_Regulations_2022_05082023.pdf
Sant Gadge Baba Amravati University. Guidelines for template/structure of doctoral research synopsis/proposal (Faculty of Science and Technology). https://www.sgbau.ac.in/pdf/Guidelines_Res_Synopsis_Sc_Tech_R3.pdf
Banerjee, A., Duflo, E., Glennerster, R., & Kinnan, C. (2015). The miracle of microfinance? Evidence from a randomized evaluation. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 7(1), 22–53. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20130533
Banerjee, A., Karlan, D., & Zinman, J. (2015). Six randomized evaluations of microcredit: Introduction and further steps. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 7(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20140287
Swain, R. B., & Wallentin, F. Y. (2009). Does microfinance empower women? Evidence from self-help groups in India. International Review of Applied Economics, 23(5), 541–556. https://doi.org/10.1080/02692170903007540
INFLIBNET Centre. Shodhganga: A reservoir of Indian theses. https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/
INFLIBNET Centre. Open access initiatives (lists ShodhGanga, ShodhGangotri and IR@INFLIBNET). https://www.inflibnet.ac.in/about/openaccess.php
American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Citing works that shorten to the same "et al." form. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/basic-principles/same-year-first-author