DrillBit plagiarism check: how it works for your thesis

What is DrillBit, and why did universities switch from Ouriginal?

DrillBit is a commercial plagiarism detection product that is also sold to institutions and publishers outside the national scheme. The version supplied to universities under the national licence is called DrillBit-Extreme.

The national licence comes from ShodhShuddhi, a Ministry of Education programme run by the INFLIBNET Centre. According to INFLIBNET, ShodhShuddhi has given universities and institutions access to plagiarism detection software since 1 September 2019. For the first four years that software was Ouriginal, the product formerly called Urkund, until the contract with Ouriginal by Turnitin ended on 30 September 2023. From 1 October 2023 INFLIBNET switched the programme to DrillBit-Extreme, with a trial month and full service from 1 November 2023.

So the change wasn’t a choice your department made. If your university uses the national licence, every thesis checked there since late 2023 has most likely gone through DrillBit. INFLIBNET has extended the DrillBit service several times since, most recently in June 2026, so check the ShodhShuddhi site for the current position if you are reading this much later.

Some universities also keep their own Turnitin licence alongside it. If your university’s notices mention “URKUND” or “Ouriginal”, they were probably written before October 2023.

How do you get your thesis checked on DrillBit?

The details vary between universities, but the route usually looks like this:

1. 1

   Find out who runs the check

   Ask your research cell, central library or department which office handles plagiarism checks for theses. At most universities it is the library or a named plagiarism-check coordinator, and the notice board or website usually says so.

2. 2

   Ask whether you need your own login

   Under ShodhShuddhi, PhD scholars and faculty can be given personal DrillBit accounts by the university coordinator. Some universities prefer to run thesis checks centrally instead, so ask which route yours uses.

3. 3

   Prepare the final file

   Submit the version you intend to deposit, as one file. Keep the chapter order and references exactly as they will appear, because moving text later can change the report.

4. 4

   Confirm the settings

   Ask whether references, quotations and small matches are excluded. INFLIBNET lists these as the standard settings for theses, but the university decides what it applies.

5. 5

   Read the report and the AI report

   You receive a similarity report and a separate AI-writing report. Read both before you accept the result or make changes.

6. 6

   Collect the certificate

   Once the result is within your university’s limit, the office issues the certificate your thesis submission form asks for. In DrillBit this comes from the Digital Receipt on the analysis page.

Two limits are worth knowing before you upload. INFLIBNET’s FAQ says each scholar starts with an allocation of five documents, with more granted by the university coordinator on request, and that the university’s allocation is counted per year. It also says a long document counts as several submissions, with each 20 pages counted as one, so a 200-page thesis uses up ten. Files can be up to 800 pages and 100 MB. That is why many universities ask you to check chapters with your supervisor first and send only the final thesis to the library.

If you are depositing the thesis on Shodhganga afterwards, the certificate from this check is usually one of the documents asked for; our Shodhganga submission guide covers that step.

How to read a DrillBit similarity report

A DrillBit report has the same basic parts as other similarity reports. Read them in this order:

• The similarity percentage is the share of your text that matches other sources after the chosen exclusions. It is a starting point for reading, not a verdict.
• The source list ranks the matched sources by how much of your text each accounts for. One source with a large share deserves more attention than many sources with a word or two each.
• The highlighted passages show exactly which sentences matched and where. This is where you decide whether a match is a properly cited quotation, a standard phrase or a passage that needs rewriting.
• The exclusion settings tell you whether references, quotations and small matches were left out. A percentage without its settings is hard to interpret.
• The AI report is separate from the similarity figure and measures something different. Treat it as a prompt to look again, not as proof.

The settings INFLIBNET lists for theses

INFLIBNET’s DrillBit FAQ lists the standard exclusions for theses as: exclude references and bibliography, exclude quotes and exclude small sources set to 14 words. With those settings, your reference list, properly marked quotations and short matches of up to 14 words don’t count towards the percentage. Your university may set them differently, so ask what was applied and check that the report shows it.

Short matches of three or four words

Scholars often worry about scattered highlights of three or four words. INFLIBNET’s FAQ explains these as the result of paraphrasing in many places, and says they contribute very little to the score and can be ignored. What matters is continuous passages that match a single source.

What the library can and can’t exclude

The office running the check can apply the standard exclusions and, where the university allows, set aside matches that are clearly not your writing problem, such as your own published paper that your university permits you to include. It can’t lower a figure simply because you ask, and it shouldn’t. If a match is genuinely wrong, point to the specific source and passage and ask. For how the same report parts look in Turnitin, see our guide to reading a Turnitin report.

DrillBit vs Turnitin vs Ouriginal

All three tools compare your text with other text and report the overlap. They differ in who supplies them to Indian universities, who can use them and what they search.

Why the percentages differ

If you check the same chapter on DrillBit and on Turnitin, expect two different numbers. Each tool searches its own collection of web pages, publications and submitted papers, and each applies its own matching rules and default exclusions. DrillBit says it compares against millions of scholarly publications and billions of web pages; Turnitin describes its own databases in similar broad terms. Neither figure is the “true” one. The figure that counts is the one produced by the tool and settings your university uses for thesis submission.

A second practical difference is rechecking. INFLIBNET’s FAQ says DrillBit has no automatic saving, so when you revise and upload the same thesis again it is not matched against your earlier submission. On Turnitin, whether a draft is stored in a repository depends on how the assignment or account was set up, which is a common reason a final version matches a student’s own earlier draft.

Theses in Hindi and other Indian languages, and AI-text flags

Indian-language theses

INFLIBNET’s FAQ says DrillBit supports 15 regional languages: Hindi, Kannada, Urdu, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Santhali, Gujarati, Bengali, Assamese, Odia and Punjabi, along with over 3,000 fonts. DrillBit’s own site lists more. This is one reason DrillBit suits Indian universities: a thesis written in Tamil or Hindi can be checked with the same tool as an English one.

Expect a lower percentage for a regional-language thesis. INFLIBNET’s FAQ says so directly, because far less text in those languages is available to compare against. A low figure for a Hindi thesis is therefore weaker evidence of originality than the same figure for an English one, and your examiners know that.

The AI-writing report

According to INFLIBNET, DrillBit produces a separate AI-detection report for every submission, with no setting to switch on. DrillBit describes this as detecting AI-generated text. Like every AI detector, it estimates; it can flag text a person wrote and miss text a tool wrote. The UGC 2018 regulations say nothing about AI, so what your university does with this report depends on its own circulars.

If your thesis is flagged, don’t rewrite it in a panic. Keep your drafts, notes and version history, which show how the text developed, and read our guide to using AI tools in your PhD for what is generally acceptable and what to disclose.

What to do if your DrillBit percentage is too high

First, find out what “too high” means at your university. The UGC 2018 regulations set levels that universities can make stricter, and our plagiarism limits guide explains them; don’t assume a figure from a friend at another university applies to you.

Then work from the report, not from the number:

1. Check the settings. A report run without the standard exclusions can be several points higher than the same thesis with them.
2. Look at the largest single sources first. One long match to a paper or thesis you used heavily is usually the real problem.
3. Rewrite in your own words and cite the source, or quote it properly with quotation marks and a citation. Our guide to paraphrasing and quoting shows how.
4. Check your literature review and methods chapters closely. Definitions, standard method descriptions and summaries of other studies are where most matches collect.
5. Ask for a fresh check on the revised file, keeping your allocation in mind.

Workarounds such as look-alike characters, text pasted as images or passages run through a paraphrasing tool count as academic misconduct, and examiners reading the thesis notice them even when the software doesn’t. If you want help revising a chapter, our similarity reduction support works with you on the writing and citation itself.