Submission of a dissertation and its publication Guidelines

Submission of a dissertation and its publication Guidelines

Information regarding submission and publishing a dissertation thesis:

Dean´s Directive Concerning Theses (No. 17/2017) 

Rules of Study at the Faculty of Law of Charles University

Application - Defense of the Dissertation

The elements of a dissertation thesis are set out in the Rules of Study at Faculty of Law of Charles University (Part IV., Chapter III., Article 74) and in Dean’s Directive No. 17/2017, on final theses . The composition of a dissertation thesis must strictly follow the template provided in Appendix 4 of Dean’s Directive No. 17/2017.

A  student must upload the entire dissertation thesis in the Student Information System in PDF/A-1 format, as well as both abstracts (Czech and English), and an outline of dissertation* thesis, i.e. four files in total.

A student will also submit a written application for the defence of a dissertation thesis in a doctoral programme of study to the Dean through the Student Registry after having successfully passed the state doctoral examination.

Along with an application for the defence of a dissertation thesis, a student will submit a declaration of the fulfilment of all obligations under the approved individual curriculum (IC), confirmed by the supervisor and the guarantor of the programme. The student does not submit said declaration if he/she has, according to the latest completed evaluation study, fulfilled all obligations under the IC except for the defence of the dissertation.

Along with the application for defence, the student also submits the following:

  1. An updated curriculum vitae signed by the student.
  2. A list of all publications and activities (confirmed by supervisor)**
  3. A certificate or confirmation that the dissertation or its partial outputs have been either published or accepted for publication (confirmed by supervisor)

*The outline of the dissertation includes the following parts: The summary of the dissertation, usually in a maximum of 36,000 characters including spaces which states the aims, content, and outcomes of the dissertation, the features of the original solution, and the sources used.

**A list of all professional works of the student, published or unpublished, particularly peer-reviewed articles, chapters in monographs, student’s presentations in seminars, professional conferences, and other professional events as stated in the Student Information System (and recorded in the OBD).

In the list, the student will clearly separate by title the publications in which partial outputs of the dissertation have been published or accepted for publication (they are to be entered in the OBD). If the partial outputs of the dissertation are yet to be published, the student will provide the relevant confirmation from the editorial office or publishing house together with the list. This also applies if the dissertation is published as a whole.

A dissertation the partial outputs of which have not been published cannot be accepted for the defence.

Section 47 (4) of Act No. 111/1998 Sb., the Higher Education Institutions Act, provides that a dissertation must contain original and published outputs, or outputs accepted for publication. Therefore, a dissertation the partial outputs of which have not been published in the form of a book, a chapter or chapters in a book, a journal article, or a contribution in a collection cannot be accepted for the defence. Publications which represent the publication of a partial output of the dissertation are to be marked in the list of publications. An alternative thereto, particularly in relation to the publication of the dissertation in its entirety in the form of a monograph, is a confirmation by the publisher that they will publish the dissertation. The confirmation of the future publishing must include the name of the author of the dissertation, the name of the dissertation submitted for the defence, the name of the intended publication if different from the thesis submitted, and the signature and stamp of the publisher.