Requirements / PhD degree process

Precondition of the submission of doctoral thesis shall be obtaining the absolutorium (completing the 8-semesters and earning a minimum of 240 credits). The doctoral candidate shall submit the doctoral thesis within three years starting from the complex exam.

Due to the COVID epidemic, the Government Decree of 217/2021. (April. 30, 2021) extended the doctoral thesis submission to 4 years from the date of the complex exam for those who passed the complex exam between February 1, 2018 and May 10, 2021.

Doctoral Degree Requirements

• Passing the comprehensive examination (complex exam)
• Certification of proficiency in two foreign languages is required, one of them must be English
• Thesis-like presentation of independent scientific work, technical creative work and underlying scientific results (detailed below)
• Fulfilment of the publication requirements (detailed below)

The doctoral thesis

The two most important documents to submit are the doctoral thesis and the thesis booklet.

The thesis...

• must include the objectives, new scientific/technical results of the candidate, description of his/her creative work, and demonstrate a profound knowledge of the literature and research methods applied

• is a summary piece of work, and may be submitted both in Hungarian or English
• may not exceed 250 thousand characters including the lines occupied by figures (but excluding character counts of amendments and annexes if there are any)
• must have a summary section, containing the thesis points included in the thesis booklet, each one referenced to the candidate’s own publications, and clearly associated with the statements made in the thesis points

The thesis booklet is a short (typically 12-24 pages long) A5 sized booklet format document containing the motivation, the context, the research methodology and the scientific contributions (thesis points) of the candidate.

The Publication Requirements

The list of publications needs to be prepared by entering all the data into the MTMT2 publication repository on which basis the publication score is evaluated automatically. The Doctoral Council checks the minimum requirements based on the publication repository. The minimum requirements are evaluated on the basis of the materials the candidate made publicly available. In case of requests for partly- or fully undisclosed materials, a special procedure is carried out to investigate the value of publications.

The minimum publication requirements are as follows:

• Minimum 3 publications are required
• At least 2 of them must be journal publications
• At least 2 of them must be indexed by Web of Science or Scopus
• At least 2 of them must be written with at least 50% participation of the phd student

The table below summarizes the scoring of the publications. The minimum score to be achieved is 12.

According to the general practice, the authorship is divided equally among the co-authors, e.g. if co-authors do not make any statements or the number of co-authors is more than two, the score shall be divided equally among the number of authors. When calculating the scores, the supervisor is not to be taken into account as a co-author.

For an article which has not yet appeared but its acceptance is confirmed by written notification, half of the points are awarded if modifications are still requested by the editor, if not then the full score is given.

The Doctoral Procedure

Here we provide a simplified summary on the doctoral procedure, assuming an optimistic outcome in every step.

• The thesis and all annexes are submitted for assessment 
• The Doctoral Council decides whether to start the assessment phase of the doctoral degree award procedure or reject the thesis
• Within two months – counting only the term-time at the University –, two official referees shall prepare the written assessment on the submitted thesis on the request of the Doctoral Council, and make a declaration if, in their opinion, the candidate’s thesis is eligible for public defence. Doctoral candidates shall receive the referees’ reports at least two weeks before the public disputation, and shall answer them
• The thesis must be submitted for the public discussion within two months - counting only the term-time – from the receipt of the supporting recommendations of the referees
• The date, time and place of the public defence shall be announced at least three weeks before the due date on the www.doktori.hu website
• At the public defence, doctoral candidates shall give a short (25 minutes) free presentation covering the thesis points of their theses, then shall answer the comments made and questions put by the referees, the Thesis Committee members and those present
• After the discussion is closed, the Thesis Committee shall evaluate the thesis and the new scientific achievements included therein in a closed session
• The Doctoral Council of the Faculty shall evaluate the outcome of the assessment procedure based on report of the Thesis Committee the numeric scores awarded by a simple majority achieved in voting by ballot
• The Doctoral Council of the University shall take decision on forwarding the application based on the suggestion of the Doctoral Council of the Faculty

 The list of Frequently Asked Questions