Information for supervisors

According to § 6 of the doctoral regulations all university teachers and private lecturers belonging to our faculty can supervise doctoral candidates.

Support tasks

In addition to your supervisory duties as specified in § 6 of the doctoral regulations, you as the official supervisor (doctoral supervisor/doctoral supervisor) are obliged to

to obtain a recognition of the ZAB for the foreign university degree of your candidate (see admission to doctoral studies),
to obtain a vote of the responsible ethics committee or an animal experimentation permit,
to give an informative vote on the dissertation of your doctoral candidate,
to hold the oral examination (disputation) as one of the two examiners.

Change of supervisor

If the doctoral candidate to be supervised by you has already been accepted at the time of your habilitation, a change of supervisor can be made. A change of supervisor has to be notified in writing, former and new supervisor(s) have to sign mutually. A new doctoral agreement must be concluded.

Antrag auf Betreuerwechsel

Admission to doctorate

The following applicants can be admitted to the "Dr. sc. hum":

with a completed German degree
with a foreign degree

Applicants with a foreign degree

The evaluation of the foreign degree by the "Zentralstelle für Ausländisches Bildungswesen" (ZAB) in Bonn must be submitted when registering for the doctorate so that the candidate's eligibility for admission can be checked.

Please note: Applicants from China must also have a certificate from the Akademische Prüfstelle (APS) . After receiving the APS certificate and being admitted to a German university, applicants can submit their visa applications directly to the APS.

Instructions for obtaining the evaluation of foreign educational certificates from the ZAB.

In the ZAB database 'anabin' you will find lists of most foreign universities and degrees with information about their recognition. For university degrees from the EU, a printout from the anabin database confirming equivalence is usually sufficient for registration.

Please note that the ZAB needs several weeks/months for the recognition of foreign degrees. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to submit the request before the candidate enters the country. The ZAB should be asked for an opinion on the doctoral admission (not on the professional admission or certificate evaluation!).

The sample letter agreed upon with the Central Office will be gladly provided by the PhD Office upon request. (The DKFZ asks the supervisors of the Center to contact the Human Resources Department or the Graduate School regarding the request to the ZAB).

Copies of the following documents must be sent to the ZAB:

Bachelor's degree: certificate, transcripts (in original language and, if applicable, English or German translation by a sworn translator)
Master's degree: certificate, transcripts/certificates (in original language and, if applicable, English or German translation by sworn translator)

Doctoral Application

Please note that according to the doctoral regulations only one prospective doctoral thesis can be registered. The necessary approvals (animal experiment approval / ethics vote) must be available or have been applied for before registration. Only after acceptance as a doctoral candidate can ISH access be granted to work on the doctoral project.

When taking on the supervision of foreign candidates, please also note: Applicants whose native language is neither German nor English must submit proof of language proficiency with their application for acceptance as a doctoral candidate.

Evaluation and duration of the doctorate

As the official supervisor, you write the initial review (votum Informativum) of the dissertation thesis. The doctoral office will gladly provide you with a template for the evaluation form upon request. Please note that from the winter semester 2023/24, the supervisor's grade will no longer be communicated to the other reviewers. Therefore, we would like to ask you to enter your grade on the evaluation form only!

In the case, your grade is summa cum laude, the proposals for external reviewers should be submitted together with the vote.

A magna or summa proposal in the votum informativum can also be accepted without a publication at the time of the opening of the procedure from the winter semester 2023/24, if a respective paper is available at least four weeks before the date of the oral examination and has been accepted by the doctoral committee.

A Dr. sc. hum. procedure at our faculty takes about 36 months: at least 24 months to complete the dissertation plus about 6-8 months to obtain the expert opinions and to conduct the oral examination. The time of the evaluation procedure depends on reviewer deadlines, meeting dates or possible conditions. Doctoral students have 6 months after examination approval to arrange the date for the oral examination (viva voce).

PhD students should be informed at the time of recruitment that they may have to re-enter the country for the oral examination.

More information & downloads

Information for reviewers

According to §9 of the doctoral regulations, at least one additional expert opinion must be obtained in addition to the informative vote. For an evaluation of the dissertation with the grade "summa cum laude", the doctoral committee obtains two additional external expert opinions.

Evaluation criteria for dissertation

We ask you to prepare your independent review within a maximum of four weeks (in case of external review within eight weeks). Based on the evaluation criteria of the faculty, you can prepare a freely formulated expert opinion. In your expert opinion you can point out deficiencies and errors and request the appropriate corrections. The corrected version of the dissertation paper listing the changes made may be sent to you again for final review.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you very much for your efforts!

Doctorate Dr. sc. hum