Faculty of Science: submitting the doctoral thesis

Always take these into account:

• The doctoral candidate is responsible for the content of the dissertation submitted for preliminary examination. The supervisor(s) are responsible for ensuring that the quality of the dissertation meets the criteria for preliminary examination. The main supervisor decides whether the dissertation manuscript must undergo language revision.
• The Faculty Council will discuss the appointment of preliminary examiners based on the proposal of the doctoral candidate’s coordinating professor. The preliminary examiners selected by the Faculty Council will be notified of the decision in writing.
• When planning the dissertation examination timetable, it is good to be aware of the Faculty Council meeting times and timetable of Dean's decisions (please see below).
• Remember that you have to be registered as an attending student through the whole examination process all the way up until your graduation.

How the examination launch process works:

1. Once the dissertation manuscript is ready and doctoral studies completed, the coordinating professor and supervisor(s) start looking for preliminary examiners.
2. After having consulted the doctoral candidate and the supervisors, the coordinating professor proposes preliminary examiners and the grading committee to the Faculty with this e-form The doctoral candidate may object to the selection of preliminary examiners.
3. The Faculty Council appoints at least two preliminary examiners for the dissertation.
4. The doctoral candidate submits the manuscript to the Faculty in one PDF file, including also published and as yet unpublished articles, to kumpula-phd@helsinki.fi a week before the Faculty Council meeting at the latest. At the same time, the doctoral candidate must submit a report on their contribution to each co-authored publication, if one is not included in the dissertation manuscript.
5. The Doctoral Student Services of the faculty will provide the preliminary examiners with guidelines and the dissertation manuscript.

The preliminary examiners will have four weeks to submit, either jointly or separately, a written reasoned statement on the dissertation. The Faculty Doctoral Student Services will forward the statements received to the doctoral candidate and other necessary parties.

In their statements, the preliminary examiners must pay attention to at least the following matters:

• The significance and status of the research within the research field
• The scope of the dissertation and the sufficiency of the material, the significance of the content and deficiencies of the manuscripts submitted for publication
• The application and development of the research methods
• The derivation of the results from the material studied
• The consistency of the structure of the work
• Familiarity with and use of the literature
• The composition of the dissertation (presentation, style and language)
• Sufficiency of the doctoral candidate’s own research contribution (if the dissertation contains co-authored articles): whether the author has contributed sufficiently to the dissertation as a whole

If they so wish, the doctoral candidate has the right to submit an objection to the preliminary examination statements before the Faculty Council processes them.

Schedule of Dean’s Decision

The preliminary examiners will be given approximately four weeks from the Faculty Council meeting where the preliminary examination process was launched to give their statements. The below table gives the deadlines for preliminary examiner statements to ensure that the issue of granting permission to defend the dissertation in a public examination can be processed in the next possible Dean’s Decision. If the statement does not arrive by the deadline, the processing of the issue will be delayed to the next possible deadline. The doctoral study services will send you e-mail if your issue is proceed.

SPRING PERIOD 2026 

AUTUMN 2026: