At some point the doctoral student, the supervisor(s) and thesis committee will have agreed on the timing for the writing of the final thesis work. Your local university will supply the instructions on how to proceed - however here are some general guidelines.

Remember that the arrangements take a considerable amount of time. Reviewers must be approved by faculty committees, whose meetings occur once per month excluding summertime. Reviewers may be given a month or more to return comments back to the faculty. When the faculty has obtained positive reviews, the opponents name must be submitted for approval by the faculty committee, and the date of the oral defense can be proposed. The whole process can take 3 or more months.

No thesis should be sent out for review if the parties involved are not convinced that the thesis is of the quality and content that is required for a doctoral degree according to current standards.

Reviewers of the thesis form the second set of independent reviewers of the dissertation that should focus on the material that has not been submitted for peer review, the introduction and literature review and any manuscripts appended to the thesis. Reviewers should be chosen with care since their opinions matter most and no thesis should reach an opponent if there are serious problems.

iBioMEP encourages the selection of foreign reviewers if timing permits.

Because research within iBioMEP is often multidisciplinary, reviewers should be chosen to provide expert opinions on different major aspects of the thesis.

Opponent(s) of the thesis represent the final level of review of the thesis and of the candidate for the doctoral degree.

Foreign opponents of the dissertation are encouraged and like all reviewers in the process must be an independent reviewer without any conflicts of interest with the candidate for the degree.

The opponent has several goals but the most important ones are to establish that the candidate has prepared the thesis materials, that the candidate is familiar with the literature in his/her field of study, and that the candidate can address a range of broad questions surrounding the thesis topic.

Please let iBioMEP know when the thesis defense is scheduled so that we may advertise the fact to others in the school. Please send a copy of the published thesis to iBioMEP for its archive, we thank you in advance!