SENATE DECISION ON PUBLICATION REQUIREMENT FOR ELIGIBILITY TO ENTER THE PHD THESIS DEFENSE
Starting from the Spring Semester of the 2025–2026 Academic Year, and applicable to students who have not yet passed the doctoral qualifying exam, it has been decided that students must meet the minimum publication requirement attached hereto in order to be eligible to enter the PhD thesis defense. For students who have reached the thesis defense stage but have not yet met the publication requirement, the relevant Institute Executive Board may grant leave of absence (registration freeze) for one semester at a time, for up to a maximum of four semesters, in order to allow them to fulfill the requirement.
Annex to the Decision of the University Senate dated February 5, 2026, and numbered 2026/2-1:
Minimum Publication Requirement for Eligibility to Enter the PhD Thesis Defense*
In order to be eligible to enter the PhD thesis defense, students must fulfill at least one of the following activities related to their doctoral field of study or thesis research:
1. An article published or accepted for publication in a journal indexed in WoS or Scopus
2. Publication of a book or book chapter indexed by WoS or Scopus (excluding those consisting of conference proceedings)
3. A full-text paper presented at a conference ranked within the top 100 overall or top 20 in its subfield according to the h5-index rankings published by Google Scholar Metrics
4. A nationally or internationally registered patent, or a patent application that has received a positive PCT report
5. A full-text paper presented at an international congress indexed by WoS or Scopus, or at an international congress that has been organized at least 10 times
* Relevant Institute Departments may introduce additional requirements to the minimum conditions listed above. Implementation procedures and ethical codes are determined by the respective Institute Boards.