FAQ

Yes, the doctoral regulations do not require that you have studied in Heidelberg. The condition is that you have a doctoral supervisor who is habilitated at our faculty and that other admission requirements are met.

As of March 30, 2018, the amendment to the State University Act of Baden-Württemberg came into effect. According to Section 38 (5), "Persons who have been accepted as doctoral candidates shall be enrolled in accordance with Section 60, Paragraph 1, Sentence 1, Letter b; this shall not apply to accepted doctoral candidates who are employed full-time at the university if they have previously declared in writing to the Rectorate that they do not wish to be enrolled."

In this context, we draw your attention to the matriculation requirement. The concrete measures to implement the legal requirement at Heidelberg University are in preparation.

• More information about enrolment

The "Heidelberg Faculty of Medicine" and the "Mannheim Faculty of Medicine" are two independent faculties of the University of Heidelberg with joint doctoral regulations. All additional regulations regarding the procedure as well as the documents to be submitted may differ from each other. The faculty at which your doctoral supervisor is habilitated is responsible for your doctoral procedure.

If your supervisor changes jobs but remains habilitated at our faculty, he/she retains the right to supervise doctoral candidates. However, if his/her faculty affiliation expires (e.g., upon acceptance of a call), all doctoral candidates already registered can still be supervised to completion through our faculty, but no new candidates can be accepted.

It should be considered that a change of position and the associated requirements at the new workplace as well as the spatial distance often make supervision more difficult. Therefore, it should be clarified internally whether an amicable change of supervisor within the department is desirable or sensible.

Yes, the doctoral regulations allow the submission of the dissertation in German or English, a special application for this is not required.

An exclusively proper citation is not sufficient; the permission of the respective publisher or journal must be obtained, and fees may also have to be paid. For students and doctoral candidates, there is sometimes a simplified procedure.

If the dissertation is to be submitted to our faculty, PromO and regulations of our faculty apply. This means in detail:

• The doctoral supervisor must be habilitated at our faculty (§ 4, Abs. 1 PromO), a cooperation with an external institution is possible under this condition.
• Please note that animal experimentation permits and ethics votes must also be submitted for dissertations prepared abroad, depending on the language of the document, along with an official translation if necessary.
• A declaration of the external institute director must be submitted, which allows the candidate to submit the results obtained there as part of a dissertation at the Medical Faculty of Hedidelberg (§ 4, Para. 4 PromO).
• The official supervisor (= habilitated at our faculty) together with the clinic/institute will appear on the finished dissertation. The cooperating institution will be mentioned on the title page, the co-supervisor will be acknowledged in the acknowledgement; he/she will not appear as the doctoral supervisor.

You can only earn a doctorate once with one degree. This also applies if the doctorate or a corresponding equivalent (PhD) was obtained abroad. If you have already obtained a doctorate /PhD, a second doctorate at our faculty is only possible with another degree, e.g.:

• You have completed a medical and a dental degree. This allows you to obtain once the "Dr. med." and another time the "Dr. med. dent." doctorate.
• You have completed a university diploma and a (dental) medical degree. In this case, the diploma entitles you to the doctorate "Dr. sc. hum." and the (dental) medical examination entitles you to a doctorate to the degree of" Dr. med."

A doctoral degree acquired abroad which is awarded merely as a certificate of completion of studies (a so-called professional doctorate such as the Austrian "Dr. med. univ. " or the Hungarian"dr. med.") does not count as a doctorate.

Thus, the degree of a "Medical Doctor" is also not to be confused with the German title of a "Dr. med.". While the "Medical Doctor" as a degree is comparable to the German medical state examination, our medical doctorate would be translated as "Doctor of Medicine".