All official rules and requirements are issued by the Faculty of Science, and the relevant information is found on their PhD studies website. The most important document is the “Promotionsordnung”, which defines all the official rules and regulations concerning your doctorate. This document only exists in German due to legal reasons, but you can contact the PhD office for an English version.

The templates for documents displayed in the overview scheme are also listed on the PhD studies website for download (i.e. Application of external expert form, form for PhD reports, PhD application form, Doctoral agreement template). 

An overview of the milestones for your PhD studies can also be found in the “Guidelines” document on the PhD studies website or in the checklist provided by the PhD Program on this website. 

Before you can defend, you need to appoint an external expert, and hand in your PhD application together with your dissertation manuscript, your doctoral agreement including the committee meeting notes, a written declaration of independent authorship, your CV and your academic progress summary to the Faculty (diss.philnat@unibas.ch). The current wording that must be included in the written declaration of independent authorship is defined in the Promotionsordnung. Simultaneously, you also send your dissertation manuscript together with the form for PhD reports to your PhD committee for evaluation. 

The application of external expert MUST occur at least 8 weeks (but no earlier than 6 months) and the PhD application at least 4 weeks before the Faculty assembly. If this happens later, your PhD application will only be evaluated during the next Faculty assembly! Please consult the Schedule Overview of Faculty Assemblies early on, and be aware that Faculty Assemblies only take place once a month and do NOT take place during semester breaks (i.e. no Assemblies in July, August and January). So start to plan early on with these deadlines in mind. 

Once the Faculty Assembly has approved of your PhD application, you can defend your thesis (so in principle you can defend on the first day after the Assembly). However, you must inform the Faculty in advance about the place, location, time, format and chairperson of your defence, so that they can prepare the required documents for your exam. The faculty will send these exam documents directly to the chairperson of your defence. The chairperson is a professor from the Department who will represent the Faculty during the defence. You can chose the chairperson yourself, so please contact your preferred chairperson early on to ensure they are available at the date and time of your defence.

The defence should take place no later than 6 months after the Faculty Assembly. The defence must last for at least one hour, and all the members of your PhD committee must be present (1^st supervisor, 2^nd supervisor, external expert). Participation of external experts via zoom is also allowed. 

Once you have passed your defence, you will be awarded a grade and you may call yourself Dr. phil. designata/designatus. You will also receive an official document confirming your passed doctoral exam a few days later.

The document your will receive after your defence is of preliminary nature and does NOT represent your official PhD diploma! You will only get your diploma (and right to carry the official title Dr. phil / PhD) once you have submitted the final copies of your doctoral thesis both in print and online. Please consult the information on the PhD studies website on the requirements of the printed and online copies. You must hand in your copies no later than 2 years after your defence. Once you have done this, your PhD Diploma and Diploma Supplement (couse list) will be sent to you by post, and you will also receive digital versions via services.unibas. 

So important: until you have not handed in your copies, you only have a preliminary PhD diploma which other institutions might not recognize.