Which of the following sections of a research report are not considered for…

Concept: Under the UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018, every thesis/dissertation is screened for similarity using anti-plagiarism software before submission. Under Section 7 of these Regulations, certain standard, recurring content is explicitly excluded from this similarity check, because such content is expected to repeat verbatim across independent works and its repetition does not indicate copying. The excluded categories include: quoted work reproduced with due permission/attribution, the bibliography/list of references, the table of contents, the preface, acknowledgements, generic terms, laws, standard symbols and standard equations, as well as commonly-known or coincidental phrasing of up to about fourteen consecutive words. Everything else — the researcher's own original write-up, including the abstract, observations/findings, and conclusions — remains within scope of the similarity check.

Application: Checking each of the five listed sections against this rule:

• Abstract — part of the original write-up summarising the study, so it is checked for similarity.

• All generic terms, laws — explicitly excluded, since standard terminology and legal or technical phrasing recur naturally across unrelated works.

• Observation — records the researcher's own findings, so it is checked for similarity.

• Conclusion — the researcher's own synthesis of the findings, so it is checked for similarity.

• Bibliography — explicitly excluded, since a reference list necessarily overlaps with other works that cite the same sources.

So the sections not considered while checking similarity are the generic terms/laws and the bibliography, that is (B) and (E) only — exactly the combination offered.

Cross-check: This matches Section 7 of the UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018, which lists the permitted exclusions from the similarity index as quotes (with permission/attribution), bibliography/references, table of contents, preface, acknowledgements, generic terms, laws, and standard symbols/equations. The abstract, observations, and conclusion are not part of that exclusion list, confirming they stay within the similarity check.

The other combinations mismatch this rule:

• "(A), (B), (C) and (D) Only" wrongly includes three checked sections (Abstract, Observation, Conclusion) alongside one excluded section.

• "(E) Only" captures just one of the two excluded sections and misses the generic terms/laws.

• "(C), (D) and (E) Only" mixes two checked sections (Observation, Conclusion) with only one excluded section (Bibliography).