Submission of a dissertation and its publication Guidelines
Information regarding submission and publishing a dissertation thesis
The elements of a dissertation thesis are set out in the Rules of Study at Faculty of Law of Charles University and in Dean’s Directive No. 17/2017, on final theses. The composition of a dissertation thesis must strictly follow the template provided in Attachment 4 of Dean’s Measure No. 17/2017.
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.
A student will 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.
Prior to submitting his/her dissertation thesis in a hard-copy format to the Student Registry, the student must upload the entire dissertation thesis in the Student Information System in PDF/A-1 format, which will be the same as the hardcopy, as well as both abstracts, i.e., three files in total.
Along with the application for defence, the student also submits the following:
- An updated curriculum vitae signed by the student.
- 5 bound copies of the dissertation.
- A minimum of 3 copies of the outline of the dissertation*.
*The outline of the dissertation includes the following parts:
The summary of the dissertation in the English language, 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 certificate or confirmation that the dissertation or its partial outputs have been either published or accepted for publication (confirmed also by the supervisor).
A list of all professional works of the student, published or unpublished, particularly peer-reviewed articles, chapters in monographs, student’s presentations in seminars, professional conferences, and other professional events as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); the list must be certified by the supervisor.
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.
