foreign examiners for phd thesis evaluation

Top 5 Tips on How to Choose Your PhD External Examiner

In your PhD journey, you may have seen it all—late nights, tears, frustration! Although completing your PhD thesis is an accomplishment in itself, defending it is a momentous event. When preparing to defend their thesis becomes a priority, PhD students often neglect the importance of choosing the right external examiner. In this article, we shall discuss why it is important to choose your PhD external examiner wisely and also share the top 5 tips on how to do so.

Table of Contents

Why is Choosing the Right PhD External Examiner Important?

If we are to be inspired by Socrates, we could unhesitatingly say “an unexamined thesis is not worth writing”. Therefore, considering that thesis examination is an object of study, the selection of your examiner must be done scrupulously. Hence, what stands between you and the hallowed status of “Doctor” is the thesis defense. A PhD student cannot directly select an external examiner. However, you can suggest examiners to the academic unit. As you have been involved in the study for years, you know the intricacies of the research and who would be suitable for judging the same. You can do all you want to defend your thesis in the best possible way but it would stay fruitless if you do so in front of the wrong examiners.

What Happens When You Do Not Choose the Right Examiner?

As part of the PhD examination process, examiners take anywhere between two to four weeks to read your submitted thesis and accept it for defense. The countless hours you’ve put into conducting research and completing your thesis cannot be undermined by a poor choice of external examiners.

A PhD thesis defense can be a disaster if your examiners do not grasp the intent of your thesis and the scholarly context of work. Your decision of choosing a wrong examiner may have unpredictable outcomes. It could mean a tense discussion between you and the examiner. Furthermore, it may also result in months spent on rewriting your thesis to the understanding of your examiner. It is not about finding an examiner who can easily handover your PhD degree without proper judgment. Rather, it is important to find examiners who have the expertise in your research area and can provide well-informed judgments.

Tips to Consider While Selecting Your Examiner

The process of selecting an external examiner is not as difficult as it may seem. It’s likely you have already known your examiner during your literature review .

Here we discuss the top 5 things to consider while selecting your PhD external examiner .

1. Expertise in Your Research Area

Only researchers involved in similar topics can be considered as experts to judge your work. Therefore, you must begin with making a list of academic authors within your research domain and find them on different social networking platforms such as LinkedIn, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Altmetric, Google Scholar, Mendeley, etc. Use this information to make a short document for your supervisor’s and department’s consideration. Include your rationale for why they would be a good PhD external examiner . It’s better to submit the examiner profile document to your supervisor at least six months before you plan to submit your thesis.

In an exceptional situation, finding a conversant examiner may get difficult if your research aims to cover multiple topics. In such case, choose examiners striking a balance, with the aim to cover at least a couple of the most important areas that you refer to in your thesis.

2. Beware of Conflict of Interest

Conflict of interest guidelines are set to protect candidates, examiners, and the university from potential negative perceptions during the PhD thesis examination. Even if the external examiner has no conflict of interest with you, they may have one with the institution or the supervisor. As a researcher, you may have made connections with several people from your field. Existence of a conflict of interest does not directly prevent a potential examiner from being approved as a thesis examiner. You may make your supervisor aware of such connections and networks—it’s up to them to decide if the relationship constitutes a conflict of interest or not.

3. Reputation in the Community

PhD external examiners will become key contacts for you as you start seeking jobs and publishing opportunities. They can very well serve as a reference on your job application. A renowned and reputed examiner’s name as a reference on your resume will undoubtedly do wonders for you. Additionally, an experienced and influential examiner may also suggest journals, conferences, and other platforms to publish your work and direct you to go ahead with your future research. However, it’s better to not approach an examiner who is retired or close to retirement. They may not be available to help you in the long run.

4. Experience as a PhD External Examiner

An examiner’s experience plays a key role in assessing your work as they may have examined similar work in your domain earlier. Eventually, the more experienced your examiner is, the more theses they may have read. Such examiners are more likely to correlate your thesis with a standard for better evaluation. Furthermore, it is known that experienced examiners are more forgiving than new ones.

5. Accept Difference in Methodology

Having worked in the same field, it is highly possible that your potential examiner may not completely agree with the methodology you’ve used. In such situations, it is important for you to familiarize yourself with their work and the approach they follow. This will help you in understanding if they are likely to agree with your interpretation of the data. Your PhD external examiner must be open to accept your research methodology if it validates your results.

Key Questions to Consider While Selecting Your PhD External Examiner

• Does the PhD external examiner have at least equal qualification to the degree that they are assessing? For e.g. if an external examiner is assessing a PhD thesis, he/she must at least be a PhD graduate.
• Do they have a conflict of interest with the student, supervisor, or the university?
• Are they influential in the field?
• Can they give constructive feedback to make the thesis better?
• Do they serve as an editor or reviewer for journals or books?
• Will they be helpful in advancing your research career?

While finding an examiner to give you a strategic support is one of the concerns, it isn’t an important one. Your focus should be on finding someone who is knowledgeable and can provide informed judgments about your thesis. Follow these tips and simplify the process of finding your external examiner. Let us know about the challenges you faced while approaching your examiners for thesis defense.

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Submission and evaluation

Steps to submission.

Students should be aware that  in each term there is a cut-off date for submitting the thesis for evaluation. If the student misses this date, there are financial and possibly other consequences. Students are advised to verify applicable deadlines.

Prior to submitting the thesis, the student must have fulfilled all of the program's requirements and have submitted the list of examiners.

If the student is in a cotutelle arrangement, he or she should read their cotutelle agreement and check with the academic units of each institution regarding the submission procedures for both universities.

Examiners nomination arrow_drop_down

The list of examiners is proposed by the student in consultation with his or her supervisor. The student must ensure that the nomination form of the examiners has been completed and forwarded using a Service request in his or her Candidate Center (uoZone). The list must be submitted at least one month before the filing date. Any delay in the submission of this form will delay the entire evaluation and defence process and may have financial consequences since the submission of the thesis can not be accepted if the list of examiners has not been submitted .

• Form - List of examiners for the evaluation of the thesis (PDF)

PhD thesis external examiner arrow_drop_down

Each PhD thesis has an external examiner in addition to the internal examiners. The proposed external examiner should be at arm’s length from the PhD candidate, from the thesis research and from the thesis supervisor. Examiners must be seen to be able to examine the student and the thesis free of substantial conflict of interest.

To enable the faculty to check that external examiners have appropriate expertise and to validate that they are not in conflict of interest, a curriculum vitae must be provided for each proposed examiner. The curriculum vitae should include, the rank, supervisions and a list of publications.

In signing the form with the names of the proposed examiners, the director of the academic unit or delegate is indicating that, to the best of their knowledge, no conflict of interest exists.

For more information, or if there is any question about whether a potential external examiner is at arm’s length, please contact your faculty.

• Examples of conflict of interest

Submission for evaluation arrow_drop_down

When submitting a thesis for evaluation, the student must be enrolled. It is important that the student submits the final draft to his or her thesis supervisor sufficiently early in the term. By doing so the supervisor can read it, provide feedback and deliver it to the student in a timely manner. Consequently, the student can then make the latest revisions or corrections and submit his or her thesis for evaluation, after having obtained approval from the supervisor that the thesis is ready for evaluation .

Thesis submission method arrow_drop_down

The student has to submit an electronic copy of the thesis in the Candidate Center accessible through uoZone .

Statement of the thesis supervisor arrow_drop_down

The supervisor acknowledges having examined the thesis and propose to submit it to the jury. The thesis supervisor will approve or refute the thesis submission throughout the uoCampus portal.

The thesis supervisor will approve the submission of the thesis if he or she is convinced that the thesis meets the standards of the program of studies. In some cases, the thesis supervisor may ask the student to further develop his or her work.

Students who wish to know their status at this stage must log in to the Candidate Center (uoZone).

Steps to evaluation

Evaluation by the thesis jury.

The jury examiners must evaluate the thesis independently and, during the evaluation process, must not contact other examiners, the thesis supervisor, or the student to discuss the thesis evaluation before they submit their report to the office organizing the evaluation and defence.  

• Written evaluation of master’s thesis without oral defence and verdicts: See regulation C-7.10.2 of the Academic Regulation on thesis.
• Written evaluation of master’s thesis with oral defence and verdicts: See regulation C-7.10.2 of the Academic Regulation on thesis.
• Written evaluation of a doctoral thesis and verdicts: See regulation C-7.10.2 of the Academic Regulation on thesis.

For theses with an oral defence component, the thesis will be evaluated and then defended in person before a jury composed of professors other than the thesis director. Jury members read and evaluate the thesis. They must express their opinion on the thesis, and indicate whether they consider it ready for defence.

Thesis evaluation report with oral defence requirement

All examiners must submit a written and detailed evaluation report. All reports and examiner's name will be sent to the student and the thesis supervisor(s) and to the other examiners, including the president of the defence, prior to the thesis defence.

The examiner's reports must be sufficiently detailed to allow student to prepare for the defence or, if necessary, to make revisions. It is therefore very important for examiners to write relevant comments. An examiner who judges that the thesis is not ready to go to the defence must specify what gaps need to be filled.

• Are there any flaws in the interpretation of the results or in the method?
• The presentation is problematic and harms the comprehension of certain passages?

Note that the examiner's comments are also considered when a student is recommended for a prize (thesis with or without oral defence requirement).

Typographical errors should not be listed in the report itself but on a separate page.

Students who wish to know their status at this stage can connect to the Candidate center (uoZone). 

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Examination of Doctoral Theses: Research About the Process and Proposed Procedures

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• Ronel Erwee 7 &
• Chad Perry 7 , 8  

Part of the book series: University Development and Administration ((UDAA))

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Despite some standard thesis examination guidelines having been established by institutions, examination of theses by individual examiners was known in the 1990s and early 2000s to be an irregular and idiosyncratic process that could delay completion of candidature. This chapter reviews research that established this disappointing position about issues in the examination process and what happened a decade after this initial situation. It then proposes some standard procedures to make sound thesis examination procedures for institutions and examiners. These procedures cover many issues that affect the thesis examination process like the definition of a degree, selection of examiners, criteria to evaluate the contribution of the research, and proposals for future policies and practices.

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Erwee, R., Perry, C. (2018). Examination of Doctoral Theses: Research About the Process and Proposed Procedures. In: Erwee, R., Harmes, M., Harmes, M., Danaher, P. (eds) Postgraduate Education in Higher Education. University Development and Administration. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5249-1_4

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