Revision of the thesis

When the assessment committee reviews the PhD thesis, they can make one out of three recommendations:

  • The PhD thesis is recommended for public defence
  • The PhD thesis should be revised before a public defence.
  • The PhD thesis should not be considered for a public defence

Revising the PhD thesis is relatively common. Approximately 10% of all PhD theses submitted to SUND are preliminary rejected, and students are asked to revise. It very rarely happens that the PhD thesis is not considered for a public defence (rejected). 

 

Your revised thesis must be accompanied by a cover letter describing in detail point by point the revisions made. The cover letter will be sent to the assessment committee. If you choose not to follow any or some of the assessment committee's recommendations, you should explain the rationale behind your decision.

Additionally, you can include a separate version of the PhD thesis with changes tracked (in addition to the final revised thesis). If you submit a file with tracked changes, you must make it clear in the file name that this is a supporting document and not the final thesis. This supporting document will be sent to the assessment committee to be used on a voluntary basis.

You can choose to include either the original submission date or the resubmission date on the front page of your thesis.

 

If the assessment committee recommends that you revise the PhD thesis, the Graduate School initiates the following process:

  • 1

    The Graduate School forwards the recommendation to the PhD student and the principal supervisor and offers them the opportunity to comment on the negative recommendation or to state that they have no comments.

  • 2

    When the Graduate School has received a reply from both principal supervisor and PhD student, the Head of the Graduate School decides whether the PhD student can revise the thesis and sets the deadline for resubmission.

  • 3

    The Graduate School sends the decision about the revision to the PhD student, the principal supervisor and the assessment committee.

  • 4

    The PhD student will have at least 3 months to revise the thesis and re-submits the revised thesis to the Graduate School via PhD Planner.

  • 5

    The Graduate School sends the revised thesis to the Royal Library for duplicate text screening.

  • 6

    If there are no problematic findings of duplicate text, the Graduate School sends the revised thesis to the assessment committee.

  • 7

    The assessment committee has 6 weeks to assess the revised thesis.

  • 8

    The assessment committee submits their recommendation to the Graduate School, and the Graduate School forwards the recommendation to the PhD student and the principal supervisor.

  • 9

    If the recommendation is favorable, the defence can be held.