PBAS starts with evidence. Build a portfolio your institution can review.

Start with your institution’s current form

PBAS means Performance Based Appraisal System. In practice, faculty use appraisal forms and supporting records to document academic work. CAS is the career advancement process; the portfolio is evidence for that process. The terms are connected, but an annual appraisal and a promotion application may ask for different periods, declarations and attachments.

Before entering scores, obtain the current form from your university, college or IQAC office. Record its version, assessment period, faculty category and the rules it adopts. An institutional example from Mahatma Gandhi University explicitly identifies its UGC 2018 option. That illustrates why the applicable version should be visible rather than assumed. [1]

This guide does not reproduce a universal points table. Ask the responsible office which regulations, amendments, discipline rules and institutional procedures apply to your case. Keep that answer with the portfolio so a future reviewer can trace your choices.

Build an evidence register before a score sheet

Create one record per activity. For a publication, keep the title, DOI or other identifier, publication date, venue, author list and your contribution. For a presentation, keep the event title, edition, date, programme entry and certificate. For teaching or service, use the evidence requested by the institutional form.

Do not treat every imported publication as a scored contribution. Check that it falls inside the reporting period, that your authorship is correct and that the institutional category accepts it. Maintain a separate status for “recorded”, “evidence attached” and “reviewed”. This prevents a neat PDF from disguising missing evidence.

ORCID supports several ways to add works, including identifiers and BibTeX imports. Use those records as metadata starting points; reconcile them with the underlying publication and your institution’s requirements. [2]

Treat journal status as dated evidence

A government reply dated 2 April 2025 confirms that UGC decided to discontinue the CARE scheme and discussed discipline-sensitive journal selection parameters. An old list or an old portal entry should therefore not be presented as a current, universal approval guarantee. [3]

For each claimed journal item, save the exact journal identity and the evidence used at the relevant date. Ask your institution how it handles historic publications and the transition in journal-selection policy. A similarly named website is not necessarily the journal that published your paper.

Where ScholarVault can help

ScholarVault’s Academic Impact workflow includes a PBAS/UGC-CAS portfolio editor, publication and presentation entries, configured score estimates and a dossier download or print action. The useful role is preparation: bring records together, inspect assumptions and create a draft for review. [4]

Review imported titles, authorship, impact-factor inputs and event categories before relying on the output. User-entered data needs supporting evidence. A verification block on an exported document is a place for an authorised reviewer to complete; it is not evidence that a university has already approved or stamped it.

Keep academic-impact metrics separate from appraisal rules. Citation counts, h-index and a configured portfolio estimate answer different questions. ScholarVault is not the promotion committee, and the app should not be used to infer eligibility from a score alone.

A repeatable handoff to IQAC

Use a final review meeting to check the assessment period, missing documents, duplicate claims and category mapping. Export a versioned draft and retain the evidence register that generated it. If a reviewer changes a classification, record the reason rather than silently replacing the earlier total.

For example, a faculty member with a journal paper, an invited lecture and a conference certificate can first assemble three activity records. The next step is to verify what each record represents, then map it to the institution’s form. A participation certificate should not become a presentation claim simply because both relate to the same event.

Your next step: download your institution’s current form and list the documents it requests. Then use the Academic Impact guide to prepare a draft portfolio against that checklist.