1. In addition to the University legislation, the School of Engineering follows these procedural rules and requirements for the completion of doctoral studies by doctoral candidate.
2. A doctoral candidate shall submit the doctoral thesis to the Director of a Department/Centre at least 3 months prior to the defence, which includes:
2.1 Introduction, including the following:
– an overview of the nature of the research problem,
– definition of the research problem,
– research objectives,
– research hypotheses (incl. 3-4 hypotheses, at least one of which is numerical),
– research tasks,
– contributions and dissemination (including scientific and practical novelties).
2.2 Description of the methodology;
2.3 The course and/or evidence of solving the research problem;
2.4 Summary;
2.5 List of references;
2.6 A thorough summary of the content of the thesis in Estonian.
3. The Director shall appoint a reviewer at least 2.5 months prior to the defence.
4. The Director shall organise a peer review (including a recommended pre-defence) at least 2 months prior to the defence.
5. A doctoral candidate shall submit the following documents to the Dean at least 2 months prior to the defence:
5.1 A defence application downloaded from the study information system and signed by the supervisor;
5.2 Doctoral thesis prepared for publication;
5.3 A written opinion from the supervisor(s) on the work;
5.4 A peer review report on the eligibility of the thesis, which includes information on: 1) whether the volume of work by the doctoral student as a co-author of articles is sufficient for applying for a PhD degree; 2) whether the thesis is ready and the meets the quality requirement of comprehensive research; 3) whether the different parts of the thesis form an adequate, sufficiently uniform and comprehensive compilation of the requirements for the doctoral thesis, and whether the structure is logical; 4) whether the conclusions of the thesis are in accordance with the definition of the problem.
5.5 A confirmation letter from the Director of the structural unit regarding the pre-defence of the doctoral thesis.
5.6 A copy of the inspection of the doctoral thesis carried out by the structural unit (institute) with the university-wide plagiarism detection software.
6. At the latest within one month from the submission of the documents described in article 5, i.e. at least one month prior to the defence, the Dean shall decide whether to allow the thesis for defence, return the non-compliant thesis, or require the thesis to be supplemented or rewritten. The Dean will forward the doctoral thesis to the Faculty Council for discussion, if necessary.
7. The time and place of the defence of the doctoral thesis shall be disclosed at least one month prior to the defence on the website of Tallinn University of Technology, with a link to the thesis summary and reference to the availability of the full text. The authorship agreements, publishing work in digital collection and forwarding the thesis to the publisher at least 1 month prior to the defence shall be concluded with the library.
8. The doctoral thesis must be published electronically in the library’s digital collection one month before the doctoral thesis defence. The doctoral thesis will be published in print by agreement with the director of the institute on the basis of a letter of order submitted to the publisher before the doctoral thesis defence. The procedure for publishing the doctoral thesis is provided on the Tallinn University of Technology library website in the “Press/Doctoral Students” section.