Faculty of Arts: submitting the doctoral thesis

Launching the preliminary examination process requires a recommendation by the supervisors and the coordinating academic. The supervisors together with the coordinating academic will also find suitable preliminary examiners and a faculty representative. For this reason it is important to notify your supervisors and the coordinating academic about your plans to submit your manuscript for preliminary examination to allow your supervisor enough time to read the latest version of the dissertation and start looking for suitable preliminary examiners.

When you submit your manuscript for the preliminary examination, Doctoral Student Services will contact your coordinating academic and supervisors and ask your coordinating academic for an official proposal on preliminary examiners. If a coordinating academic has not been appointed to you, don't worry – we will agree together with your supervisors on who will make the official proposal in your case.

At the Faculty of Arts, a faculty representative, in addition to the preliminary examiners, will be appointed in conjunction with the launching of the preliminary examination, whose duty it is to monitor that the faculty’s provisions are complied with in the preliminary examination, the public examination and the grading committee. The Faculty Council appoints as a faculty representative either a Faculty professor or a docent who holds a post in the Faculty, is not the doctoral candidate’s supervisor and is familiar with Faculty practices concerning the examination of doctoral dissertations. In order to ensure impartiality, the faculty representative will be appointed as a rule outside the doctoral candidate’s discipline. The general disqualification principles (close family relationship, immediate supervisor relation, etc.) of the Faculty are followed in appointing the faculty representative.

Also remember:

• You have to be registered as an attending student from the beginning of the examination process until your graduation.
• Ensure that you have completed all the studies required for the degree and that the studies and the required study modules have been registered. At least the study module Discipline-Specific Studies must be completed and registered as a study module before submitting the dissertation for preliminary examination. Sometimes registering the studies can take a little time, but do not worry – you don't have to postpone submitting the thesis because of this. If the modules have not been entered into the register by the time you submit your thesis, it's enough for us that your supervisor confirms to us by email that they have approved the study modules and sent them for registering.

Doctoral theses are submitted for examination at the Faculty’s Doctoral Student Services no later than two weeks before the next Faculty Council meeting. Exact submission dates and Faculty Council meeting times are available below. Dissertation manuscripts are submitted for examination electronically:

• Complete your background information on an electronic form at the latest on your chosen submission date.
• On the same day, submit the manuscript in one PDF file to hum-postgrad@helsinki.fi. In the case of an article-based dissertation, the manuscript includes the summarising report and articles (both published and as yet unpublished articles, the published articles of the dissertation in their publication layout), including a possible report on co-authored articles. If the manuscript is too large to be sent by email, please use Funet Filesender.
• Once you have completed the form and sent us the manuscript, we will ask your coordinating academic and supervisors  for a suggestion for preliminary examiners and faculty representative.
• The proposal must reach the Doctoral Student Services at the latest on Monday one week before the meeting.
• If the proposal does not arrive in time, the matter will be discussed at a later meeting.
• After we have received the proposal, we will send it to you for approval.

If your dissertation is an article-based dissertation, please take into account the following:

• If the dissertation includes co-authored articles, include in the manuscript information about which part in each publication is your contribution. The content of the report must be such that the preliminary examiners can evaluate whether the candidate’s contribution is sufficient.
• Submit the report on co-authored articles also as a separate file in the same email together with the manuscript to hum-postgrad@helsinki.fi.
• As all authors must approve the report, please ask your co-authors to confirm that they approve your report, and then send the information to the Faculty doctoral student services (for example forwarded email or compiled document of confirmations will suffice). This information on the approval of the report need not be included in the manuscript.
• If it is likely that the preliminary examiners will be from outside Finland, please draw up the report in English.

If your dissertation has been in preliminary examination before and the examination process has been cancelled, please take into account the following:

• The relaunch of the preliminary examination process always requires the approval of the supervisors and the responsible teacher.
• When you resubmit a dissertation for examination, please include a written report on the key revisions made to the manuscript after the previous examination round.

Layout of the manuscript

All manuscripts are to be submitted for examination as a PDF file. Possible separate files must be combined as one PDF file (if you have any problem with this, we will help you). 

The faculty has not issued guidelines regarding the format of the dissertation manuscript. The doctoral candidate is therefore free to use his or her own judgement, but ease of reading and handling are good principles to keep in mind. The following information should always be presented on the cover page of a dissertation manuscript: title of the dissertation, the name of the doctoral candidate, and the name of the doctoral programme. 

At the preliminary examination stage, the recommended font size for the manuscript is 12. Margins should be wide enough for the examiners to be able to print out the dissertation and make notes in the margin easily if they so wish.

Doctoral dissertation manuscripts must include a one- to two-page Finnish-, Swedish- or English-language abstract after the title page. There is no separate form for the abstract; you can choose to write it the way you want. However, the abstract must include the topic of the research, the methodology used and the most significant results. The information must be presented in text form (no formulae, special symbols or figures).

Autumn term 2025

Spring term 2026

• The preliminary examiners have four weeks to issue a statement, considering the holiday periods.
• Once we have sent the manuscript to the examiners, we will inform you of the exact date the statements are expected to arrive.
• If the statements are delayed, we will take care of reminding the examiners. If you do not receive the statements in time, you can always ask after them from us.
• The preliminary examiners will send their statements directly to the faculty – not the doctoral researcher, the doctoral researcher’s coordinating academic or the supervisor. Once we have received both statements, we will provide you, your supervisors and coordinating academic as well as the faculty representative with copies of them by email as soon as possible.
• For justified reasons, it may take longer to write the preliminary statements, which is why it is not advisable for the doctoral candidate to draw up binding timetables for his or her dissertation at this stage. The doctoral candidate must make the corrections proposed by the preliminary examiners before the doctoral thesis is completed, so it is advisable to reserve time for this in advance.
• You have a right to submit comments on the statements to the Faculty Council before it decides on granting permission to defend the dissertation in a public examination. We will provide you with more detailed instructions on how to do so when we send the statements to you.
• If the preliminary examiners in their statements recommend that permission to defend the dissertation in a public examination be granted, we will ask your responsible teacher and supervisors to make proposals on the members of the grading committee (opponent, custos and faculty representative).
• When you have received the statements recommending permission to defend your thesis, you can also reserve a place for the public defence. You will receive instructions on this at the same time as you receive the positive statements.
• The aim is to expedite the process of granting permission to defend the dissertation by the Faculty Council – we will inform you of the timetable for deciding to grant permission to defend the dissertation in a public examination when we return the statements to you.
• Only after the Faculty Council has granted permission to defend the thesis based on the positive preliminary examination statements can the doctoral candidate move forward with printing of the doctoral thesis. First, read the general instructions on permission to defend your thesis and publish your thesis.

• If one or both preliminary examiners give a negative statement, the preliminary examination process is usually discontinued. You will receive information about this at the same time as you receive the statements.
• After the preliminary examination procedure has been suspended, the doctoral candidate may request a new preliminary examination when changes have been made to the manuscript as mentioned in the rejection statement or if other changes have been made and the supervisors and the coordinating academic are in favour of the start of the preliminary examination.
• At its discretion, the Faculty may ask the same or different preliminary examiners to perform the examination. As a rule, the recommendation is that at least one of the first-round examiners is appointed to the task also on the second examination round.
• The second examination round proceeds as the first, and the revised manuscript must be submitted for examination following the same instructions and timetables.
• If your receive a negative statement, do not be too worried – it is usually just an indication that the dissertation has been submitted to preliminary examination prematurely and still requires some revising.