Guide to Procedures

Doctoral Programme Advanced Studies in Humanities

Specialisations in History, Art, Philosophy and Ancient Sciences

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The following is a brief guide to the basic procedures and formalities of the doctoral programme. We include links to the different sections of the website and the website of the Doctoral School.

This concerns practical information about the programme, which we are gradually expanding and updating.

Access

Access to the Doctoral Programme in Advanced Studies in Humanities involves the following steps:

Pre-registration for 1st Year students. The application for admission or pre-enrolment is made online through the General Secretary's Office.

The Access Section checks that applications meet the administrative requirements. In the case of incomplete applications, which for various reasons cannot be processed, the usual channels are used to notify the interested parties. When applications meet the administrative requirements, they are forwarded to the programme coordinator.

Admission. The programme's Academic Committee examines the applications and reports on their admission. The coordinator sends the result telematically to the Access Section through the common platform of the Andalusian Universities and publishes it on the programme's website.

Enrollment. The Admission Section informs admitted candidates of the deadline for registration.

 

Post Access

Note: It is advisable for the Student to always have the Doctoral Regulations and their subsequent modifications at hand.

Assignment of Directors and Tutors

After enrollment on the PhD programme, the first step is the assignment of supervisors and tutors. The programme will make use of the preferences of the PhD students, provided that they have the agreement of the chosen supervisors and, where appropriate, of the tutors. The PhD student requests the assignment through the DAD application and the Academic Committee may study different options depending on the research profiles of the programme's teaching staff in order to propose the assignment. The latter may also be used to request a change of tutor/director.

Documentary Commitment to Supervision

Once the assignment of directors and tutors has been completed, the Documentary Commitment to Supervision (CDS) is prepared. From the 2016 / 2017 academic year, the CDS has been processed digitally through the DAD platform. This is a contractual guide agreed upon by doctoral students and directors, and also by their tutors, who guide the training process of the former and the supervision of the latter. The main difference with respect to previous doctoral programmes is that the completion of the doctoral theses is linked to a research plan that will be reported to an evaluation panel each academic year and the activities of which will be recorded electronically.

It is in the CDS where part-time or full-time preference is indicated, which will be taken into account for the purposes of the time frames for the defence of the doctoral thesis (with respect to this see the following section on the Research Plan).

The CDS's will be included in the doctoral students' files and will be sent from the Doctoral School to the Secretary's Office in the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts.

Until the reading of the doctoral thesis begins, the administrative procedures will be centralised in the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts. Once the reading process has begun, the Doctoral Service will take care of the administrative procedures.

The presentation of the documentary commitment to supervision is a requirement for the subsequent steps.

Research Plan

The next step is the preparation of the research plan, which includes among its tasks the doctoral thesis project.

In the section on the Documentary Commitment to Supervision we have published information on the research plan and the doctoral thesis project.

As detailed in the section Evaluation Panels on the programme's website, doctoral students have examination periods each academic year in which to present the results of their work to the programme's Evaluation Panels. Of the two examination periods, students must choose either the one in March or the one in September.

In the first year of the doctoral programme, the assessment focuses mainly on the research plan and the thesis project. Although both can be modified at a later stage, if deemed appropriate and is justified, these are the basic steps in doctoral training.

Further to this, in either the March or September evaluation period, the previously mentioned requirements will be presented to the Evaluation Panels upon presentation of the CDS. Doctoral students, directors and tutors will agree on both the research plan and the thesis project.

On the programme's website it can be seen that the requirements for both are formulated in a generic way, which we in the Academic Committee think are applicable to any of the programme's specialities. Logically, both proposals must be agreed upon by the PhD students and supervisors and, in the case of tutors not being the supervisors, their agreement will also be required.

Each research plan reflects the training programme for doctoral students. It ought to mention both the objectives and competences (what will be taught or learned) and the research methodology. With regard to the competences, we have prepared some basic information in the section Objectives and Competences, which can be adapted in each specific case with a different formulation. At the same time, the research plan will set out a timeline that reflects the time frame for the completion of the thesis in a reasonably approximate way.

In this respect, according to the general regulations of the doctoral programme at the University of Malaga regarding the rules of permanence (and Updated 22^nd June 2015), there are two types of profiles: part-time and full-time doctoral students. In the first case, the time taken to complete the thesis is between 5 and 7 years at most, while in the second case it is between 3 and 5 years at most. The periodical evaluations of the doctoral programme assess the completion of the theses in decreasing order from the initial to the maximum time frame. On the other hand, the Academic Committee will also consider cases in which a shortening of the time frame is justified.

Additionally, and through the DAD platform, any student may request a justified change of study commitment (part-time or full-time). The coordinator will transfer this request to the Academic Committee for consideration, which will thereafter be accepted or rejected.

The entire Assessment Process (application for assessment, reports from tutors / mentors-supervisors, assessment by the panels and marking) is conducted through the DAD platform and is therefore not face-to-face.

 

Tenure and Enrollment Regulations from the Fourth Year onwards

(For the Regulations of the Study Commitment and Permanence Programme, see Update 22^nd June 2015).

From the academic year 2016 / 2017 for full-time students who need to enrol for a fourth and fifth year, and for part-time students who need to enrol for a sixth and seventh year, it is necessary that in September or early October each year such requests are made through the DAD platform, indicating the reasons for the extension. The coordinator will transfer these requests to the Academic Committee for consideration, which will thereafter be accepted or rejected.

 

Doctoral Thesis Project

The research plan includes the doctoral thesis project. Likewise, we have formulated the requirements generically that the projects must fulfil. Each project has its own characteristics, but there are elements that should not be missing.

Therefore, it will be the research plans and thesis projects, together with the actual results, both in terms of training and scientific production that will be taken into account by the panels for their evaluation.

 

Title of the Doctoral Thesis

Although the evaluations and presentations will be recorded from the first year onwards, the title of the thesis is proposed in the last phase of the doctorate, when the defence of the doctoral thesis is formally requested.

 

Annual Evaluation

Each academic year there will be two evaluation sessions before an evaluation panel, in March and September. There are two panels or evaluation commissions, incumbent and substitute, one for each of the four lines of research of the programme. Doctoral students attend the corresponding evaluation period depending on when they started the programme. The purpose of the periodic evaluation is for doctoral students to defend the results of their research before researchers who can provide them with theoretical knowledge and practical and methodological guidelines not necessarily contemplated in their research plan.

From the September 2015 assessment, the procedure will be regulated by the Postgraduate Commission Agreement of the University of Malaga, 9^th April 2015.

From the academic year 2014/2015 it will be necessary to apply for the annual assessment in accordance with the procedure detailed in this link in the Upcoming Examination Periods section.

 

First Year

The following activities are compulsory:

The presentation of the thesis project and the research plan to the examining board (in either of the two examination periods set each academic year for this purpose, March or September).

The presentation of a research result in the Doctoral Research Seminar.

Participation in several of the programme's training activities, or in equivalent doctoral training activities, either from among those organised by the Doctoral School or by other institutions.

These are optional activities, which will also be included in the DAD and will be assessed:

• The presentation of research results in other forums.
• The preparation of manuscripts submitted to academic journals.
• Conducting research stays.
• Participation in the organisation of research activities.

 

Subsequent Years

These are compulsory activities from the second year onwards:

The presentation of the development of the research plan and, in particular, the development of the thesis project (in either of the two examination periods set each academic year for this purpose, March or September).

The presentation of a research result(s) at the Doctoral Research Seminar.

Participation in some of the training activities of the Programme, or in equivalent doctoral training activities, either from among those organised by the Doctoral School or by other institutions.

The gradual publication of partial research results with the aim of achieving, prior to the defence of the thesis, "quality contributions .... whose total score is equal to or higher than 1 point according to the criteria used by the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation, ANECA" (Doctoral Studies Regulations of the University of Malaga, art. 19.2).

These are optional activities, which will also be included in the DAD and will be assessed:

• The presentation of research results in other forums.
• The preparation of manuscripts submitted to academic journals.
• Conducting research stays.
• Participation in further doctoral training activities.
• Participation in the organisation of research activities.

(see detailed document)

 

Document of Activities

The Document of Activities is the "individualised control record" defined by article 2.5 of Royal Decree 99/2011 for each doctoral student. All activities of interest for the development and assessment of the PhD student are recorded on this document. The records made by the PhD student will be authorised and certified by the tutor and thesis supervisor. The annual reports made by the tutor and supervisor will also be recorded, as well as the annual assessment (in any of the two examination periods made) and the reports on the completion of training activities and training complements (where applicable) made by the Academic Committee of the Doctoral Programme in Advanced Studies in Humanities. The training activities and training complements are detailed in the respective sections of the website.

The electronic application DAD (Doctoral Student Activity Document) has been designed to manage the entire process of validation and control of the training activities carried out by doctoral students and to facilitate the annual evaluations.

In the case of the programme's training activities, the lecturers responsible for each activity will certify the participation of the doctoral students. This certificate will be scanned and uploaded by each PhD student onto the DAD application.

Finally, the Document of Activities is useful for the defence of the doctoral thesis, as it allows a more simple tracing of the student's training path within the programme.

 

Procedure for Joint Theses with Foreign Universities

The website of the Doctoral School describes the new procedure and provides the new application forms for students from both the University of Malaga and foreign universities. These forms are adapted to the regulations of the new doctoral programmes, those regulated by Royal Decree 99/2011. It is also advisable to take into account the detailed information in the Regulations for the Joint Supervision of Doctoral Theses. In summary, the steps are as follows:

1 This is a preliminary step. In each case, the mentors-supervisors, tutors and doctoral students shall agree with the joint mentors-supervisors of the foreign universities on the type of monitoring or supervision of the doctoral training. They shall also consult the regulations on joint supervision for the awarding of doctoral degrees at foreign universities.

The administrative condition is that doctoral students will enrol on both doctoral programmes (one in each country), but will only be obliged to carry out the academic activities (doctoral studies) in one of them, with a research stay of at least nine months (consecutively or distributed over different periods) in the other university being compulsory. These issues must be agreed upon by the parties before proceeding to the next step.

2  Submission of the Joint Doctoral Thesis Application (on the corresponding form), with the original signatures of the joint mentors-supervisors and doctoral students, the contact details of the respective universities, to the Programme Coordinator. With the signed report of the programme's Academic Committee, the Application is then forwarded to the Postgraduate Committee for a final report and authorisation.

3 Only then can the specific agreement governing each joint thesis be prepared and signed, irrespective of the possibility of a framework collaboration agreement between the universities concerned. The agreements will be signed by the rectors of the two universities. As this is an official document, it is advisable to consult the Doctoral School about the procedure regarding this, given that it does not contemplate, for example, that either the doctoral students or the mentors-supervisors or tutors obtain the signatures by themselves, as each procedure must be officially recorded precisely because of the academic effects produced by the co-supervision procedure: the awarding of the doctoral degree by both universities.

In some cases, if there are Erasmus or other inter-institutional agreements that clearly envisage mobility in postgraduate and, specifically, doctoral programmes, and this is verified by documentation, these may already be considered framework agreements, which facilitate the formalisation of specific agreements.

4 The fourth step, once the relevant authorisations have been obtained to carry out the doctoral thesis under the co-supervision scheme, is pre-enrollment, admission and enrollment at the other university.

The same conditions apply to students from foreign universities as described in the previous sections. In this case, the fourth step is pre-enrollment, admission and enrollment in the Advanced Studies in Humanities Doctoral Programme.

Every year the University of Malaga announces mobility grants for this purpose in the months of March and October. These are announced on the Doctoral School website, in the section Grant Plans for Doctoral Students at the University of Malaga, and these are also published in the section on Doctoral Student Grants on our website.

 

 

Defence of the Doctoral Thesis

Criteria for the Defence of the Doctoral Thesis

In accordance with the Regulations for Doctoral Studies at the University of Malaga (approved by the Postgraduate Commission of the University of Malaga at its session of 23^rd April 2015): "it is required that, during the process of preparing the doctoral thesis, the doctoral student has generated quality contributions directly related to their thesis work, whose score is equal to or higher than 1 point according to the criteria used by the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA) when evaluating Doctoral Programmes with a Certification of Excellence. These publications are those which endorse the thesis work" (art. 19.2).

For the defence of the doctoral thesis in the Advanced Studies in Humanities Programme, doctoral students must provide documentary evidence of publications of equivalent value to either one academic article in a journal of international standing (INT) according to the criteria of the European Reference Index for Humanities (ERIH Plus), or a similar international index, or two articles in journals of national standing (NAT) indexed in ERIH Plus or an equivalent quality index. In the case of publications in Spanish, two publications in journals with at least 30 Latindex editorial characteristics may be considered.

If, instead of journal articles (the preferred option), book chapters are provided, following the ANEP and ANECA criteria, their publication must be accredited by a publisher of prestige and academic relevance. The CSIC's Scholary Publishers Indicators (SPI) can be used as a reference.

The Governing Council of 28^th June 2017 introduced a series of modifications to the Doctoral Regulations which, regarding this aspect, reads as follows:

Article 19. Quality control of doctoral theses

1. The Academic Committee of each Doctoral Programme shall propose minimum quality criteria for a doctoral thesis to the Postgraduate Committee to begin the evaluation and defence process. Once approved by the Postgraduate Committee, having heard the Doctoral School where appropriate, these criteria will be published on the programme's website.

2. In general, and respecting the ways in which the different branches of knowledge operate, it is a requirement that, during the process of preparing the doctoral thesis, the doctoral student has generated quality contributions directly related to his/her thesis work, with a total score equal to or higher than 1 point according to the criteria used by the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA) in the evaluation of Doctoral Programmes with a Certification of Excellence. These merits will endorse the preparation of the thesis.

3. Quality contributions are those that can be evaluated with at least 0.5 points, according to the ANECA criteria for the evaluation of Doctoral Programmes with a Certificate of Excellence, as well as the specific evaluations (ordinary and extraordinary) of the National Commission for the Evaluation of Research Activity (CNEAI).

4. When the ANECA or the CNEAI do not establish scores lower than 1 point in detail, the Academic Committee of the Doctoral Programme will define the corresponding scores that allow each contribution to be assigned a value of 0, 0.50, 0.75 or 1 point. These evaluation criteria will be published on the Doctoral Programme website.

5. The requirements for contributions submitted to endorse a thesis are as follows:

a) That they have been presented, published or accepted for publication, display or reproduction after the date of enrollment of the PhD student on the Doctoral Programme.

b) That the University of Malaga is mentioned in the thesis, through the affiliation of the mentor-supervisor and/or the PhD student.

c) That the PhD student is listed as the first or second author of all of them.

6. Only in truly exceptional cases may the Academic Committee of the Doctoral Programme authorise that in a contribution that endorses a thesis, the doctoral student appears in a position subsequent to second, or that the contribution has been produced in a period of research prior to the registration of the doctoral student on the Programme, in view of the justifications presented and with the approval of the Postgraduate Committee.

For branches of knowledge in which the ANECA and the CNEAI recognise extraordinary criteria or valuations, other than publications, the Academic Committee of the Doctoral Programme shall submit the proposal of complements to the grading parameters to the Postgraduate Committee, for its approval. These complements shall not exceed half of these parameters.

 

Progressivity in the Application of the Criteria

The third transitional provision of the Regulation states that:

"The minimum criteria of quality required in articles 19 and 21 of these regulations shall be progressively applied. Thus, the minimum score required for a thesis to be admitted for processing, calculated as the sum of the points of the contributions that support the thesis, shall be

0.5 points for theses presented by doctoral students who have enrolled on a doctoral programme at the University of Malaga for the first time in the 2013-14 academic year.

0.75 points for theses submitted by doctoral students who have enrolled on a doctoral programme at the University of Malaga for the first time in the 2014-15 academic year.

1 point for theses presented by doctoral students who have enrolled on a doctoral programme at the University of Malaga for the first time in the 2015-16 academic year".

In accordance with this transitional provision, the Academic Committee shall apply the criteria for the defence of the doctoral thesis in a proportional and gradual manner.

 

Title of the Doctoral Thesis

Although from the first year onwards a provisional title will be recorded in the evaluations, the definitive title of the thesis is proposed in the last phase of the doctorate, when the defence of the doctoral thesis is formally requested.

 

Regulations and Procedures

Procedures and Authorisations

For the defence of the doctoral thesis, the file is transferred from the Secretary's Office from the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts to the Doctoral Service. There the procedures for the defence are centralised, which in summary involve the following authorisations:

Mentors-Supervisors - Tutors

Members of the evaluation panels

Reports from three external evaluators (in the case of international theses, from non-Spanish institutions).

Academic Committee of the Programme

Postgraduate Commission of the University of Malaga

From the 2016/17 academic year onwards, all the Thesis admission procedures will be carried out through the DAD application, without prejudice to the authorisations that must go through the Academic Committee of the Programme, in accordance with the Doctoral Studies Regulations of the University of Malaga.

 

Practical Guide to Doctoral Studies at the University of Málaga

Prepared by the Doctoral School, the Practical Guide aims to present basic information about doctoral training at the University of Malaga and provide guidance on procedures and regulations. The October 2015 version is published in this link.