Supervision of your Doctoral Research Project and Publication Requirement

Thesis Advisory Committee (TAC)

A three-person thesis advisory committee (TAC) - consisting of your main supervisor and two additional experts, will supervise your doctoral project. The committee must meet the following criteria:

• All three TAC members must be professors, private lecturers or at least have their habilitation accepted by the Faculty of Medicine (with a few exceptions)
• The 1st TAC member must be your main supervisor
• At least two TAC members must be actively employed at an institution of the Faculty of Medicine or the LMU Hospital
• One of the TAC members may be from the supervisor's institution.
• at least one TAC member must come from an institution other than your 1st TAC member (independence)
• At least one TAC member must be member of a clinical institution.
• A helpful list of all faculty members, their titles and assignment to the different institutes can be found in the LMU Directory of Persons and Institutions. This list should be used as a guide only. Please note that not all members listed here are also actively employed at an institution of the LMU Faculty of Medicine or the LMU Hospital.
• All TAC members must sign the supervision agreement by hand in ink.
• Please upload your signed supervision agreement into your Campus Portal account.

Target Agreements and Target Amendments

Together with your TAC, you should fill out and sign a target agreement within the first two months after registration of your doctoral research project with the Doctoral Office. The target agreement contains all important aspects of your structured doctoral degree - milestones, goals, training program elements, etc. If you do not manage to sign a target agreement in this time period, your doctoral research project will be terminated.

By signing the target agreement (with original signatures), you and your TAC signal a mutual interest in the successful completion of your doctoral research project, as well as showing that the planned project fulfils certain quality standards. All TAC members must sign the target agreement by hand in ink. Please upload your signed target agreement into your Campus Portal account in time! Please keep the original in your log book, which you submit together with your dissertation.

All changes to the target agreement must be recorded in a target amendment and have the unanimous acceptance of all parties involved. Please upload your signed target amendment into your Campus Portal account. Please keep the original in your log book, which you submit together with your dissertation.

All changes to the target agreement must be recorded in a target amendment and have the unanimous acceptance of all parties involved.

Interim Evaluations

Further, you must meet with your TAC on a regular basis (interim evaluations), in order to ensure that the doctoral research project is moving along as planned. The first interim evaluation must take place within 12 months after registration of the doctoral project. The interim evaluation should involve a meeting with all members of the supervisory committee, at which the current status of the work is presented by the doctoral candidate in a short power point presentation. All interim evaluations must be recorded and all potential changes to the original target agreement must be put down in writing in a target amendment.

Final Evaluation

Before you can submit your thesis, you must meet with your TAC for a final evaluation. On the basis of this, you may be admitted to the doctoral examination. The final evaluation should, just like the interim evaluation, involve a meeting with all members of the supervisory committee, at which the final status of the work is presented by the doctoral candidate in a short power point presentation. The final evaluation can be seen as the first "general rehearsal" for the defense.

Should you require certain agreements or protocol templates again, you can download individual ones below. The complete log book including all agreements and protocol templates in one package can be found under "Registration".

Please upload the protocols of your interim and final evaluation to your Campus Portal account and keep the originals in your logbook. You will have to hand in the originals together with your logbook when submitting your dissertation. Electronic signatures of your TAC members are accepted for the midterm and final evaluations.

Publication requirement

In the frame of your doctoral project you should have co-authored at least one publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Please indicate in the logbook all publications that have been accepted or published.