Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry: submitting the doctoral thesis

The Faculty Council appoints two preliminary examiners and grading committee for the thesis manuscript. The proposal on the preliminary examiners and grading committee is made by the coordinating academic, who also ensures that the proposed persons have agreed to their appointment. The proposal must be approved by the doctoral candidate.

The impartiality of the preliminary examiners will be verified at Viikki doctoral study services. The senior advisor acting as the presenting official will prepare the matter for the agenda of the Faculty Council. The timetables of the faculty councils of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry are decided on a yearly basis. They are available on the website of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry.

Supervisor information is also verified when the thesis is submitted for preliminary examination, so please ensure that your supervisors’ information is up to date in Thessa. If any changes are needed, please notify the faculty’s doctoral study services at viikki-phd@helsinki.fi (if supervisors are added or removed, please send an email with all your supervisors copied on the message).

For the purpose of appointing preliminary examiners, the doctoral candidate must submit a thesis manuscript with the documents listed below to Viikki Doctoral Study Services at viikki-phd@helsinki.fi by the deadline set for the submission of materials to the Faculty Council:

1. The thesis manuscript in one PDF file. The manuscript includes the summarising report and the component articles of the thesis. Should the file be too large to send by email, the doctoral candidate can send it, for example, with Funet FileSender.
2. Report on the division of labour, if the thesis contains co-authored publications. The division of labour between the authors must be explained briefly in such a way that it is possible for the preliminary examiners and the Faculty Council to assess the sufficiency of the doctoral candidate’s independent scientific work in the thesis. The report on the division of labour is to be signed by the doctoral candidate and the main supervisor. It is possible to include the same co-authored publication in more than one thesis, so the report on the division of labour must include information on whether the publication has been used or will be used in another thesis. If the preliminary examiners are not proficient in Finnish, the report must be written in English.
3. Summarising report and a list of the component parts of the thesis. At the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry you need to add an English-language summarising report of about one page, which includes the name of the thesis author, the title of the thesis, a short description of the thesis (approx. 5 sentences) and a list of the articles included in the thesis. The purpose of this document is to show at a glance what your thesis is about and which articles are included.
4. Theoretical studies, i.e. Discipline-specific studies -module and Transferable skills -module, must be completed and registered in Sisu before the pre-examination process can be started. When required studies are correctly registered in Sisu, you don't need any document of them. The instructions are on the web-page Registration of doctoral studies.
5. The coordinating academic makes a proposal on the preliminary examiners and grading committee using the electronic Proposal for the preliminary examiners and grading committee form. After the e-form is submitted, coordinating academic and doctoral candidate will receive an e-mail to check and confirm the proposal.
6. In addition, if needed:
   The CV of the proposed preliminary examiner(s) and an opponent and a list of publications (or links to them) if they do not possess the title of professor, associate professor or docent. Please inform the title of a professor/docent/associate professor on the form. 

Further information about the qualifications  of preliminary examiners and grading committee members is available at the website of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry.

Once the preliminary examiners have been appointed, the presenting official will provide the preliminary examiners with preliminary examination instructions and will inform the doctoral candidate and the coordinating academic about their appointment.

The time limit for the preliminary examination is four weeks. The doctoral candidate has an opportunity to object to the preliminary examiners’ statements. If you wish, you may acquaint yourself with the general guidelines pertaining to doctoral dissertations and the instructions given to examiners on the website of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry.

The Dean of the faculty will make a decision on the permission to defend based on the recommending pre-examination  statements

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 when your issue is proceed.

SPRING 2026 

AUTUMN 2026