Completing a Doctorate (PVO 2009)

Compulsory Matriculation

If you are completing a doctorate at the University of Zurich, you must be enrolled during your entire doctoral studies. This compulsory matriculation requirement applies throughout, up to and including the semester in which your PhD thesis is published. Once you have received your provisional final records you can apply for a leave of absence for the duration of the publication phase (you apply via the student portal). However, in the semester of publication you must seek regular matriculation. 
If you cannot show that you have been matriculated at UZH throughout, please write to graduiertenschule@phil.uzh.ch at least four weeks before you apply to defend your PhD.

Registration

When it comes to completing your doctoral studies please also note that you must be enrolled in the right degree program (doctorate under PVO 2009) and the right PhD subject.

You can apply for leave of absence for the publication phase. You must be regularly enrolled in the semester of publication. For persons who have completed the doctoral examination by 31 July 2023, enrollment in the PVO 2009 for publication is still possible.

To earn a doctorate the PhD thesis must be published within two years after the provisional final records are issued. Publication before receipt of the provisional final records is not permitted. 

If you cannot meet the regular publication deadline, you can submit a justified request for an extension at the earliest one month before the regular deadline expires (via Online Phd Admin Services). The deadline can be extended once by six months. Within these six months, the dissertation must be published on ZORA, in which case publishing with a publisher is no longer possible. However, you can have the dissertation blocked on ZORA for three years if you are aiming for a publication with a publisher. If you can show a publishing publication within the three years, you can have the dissertation locked on ZORA for an unlimited period of time.

Please note that you can use the title of doctor (Dr. phil.) only once you have published your PhD thesis and have received confirmation of your doctoral degree. In addition, the publication itself must not contain any information or other wording giving the impression that the doctorate has already been legally conferred at the time of publication (e.g. «Dr. phil.», «got their doctorate» etc.).

ZORA (Zurich Open Repository and Archive)

With the entry into force of the new regulations of PromVO 2019 in August 2019, doctoral students under the regulations of PO 2006 and PVO 2009 are also permitted to publish their PhD thesis on ZORA. This publication must incorporate the revision requirements prescribed by your supervisors.

The thesis will be published by the Degree team at the Office of Student Affairs. You are not permitted to publish your thesis on ZORA yourself. Any duplicates will be removed by the Office of Student Affairs. 
The author agrees that the dissertation may be processed, recorded and permanently archived in the digital library of the Swiss National Library. Any retention periods will be taken into account.

Publication on ZORA replaces publication as an e-PhD thesis or publication with a publisher, meaning that printed copies are no longer required. 

Upon application, publication of the full text on ZORA can be blocked for three years. This enables you, in the interests of your academic career, to attempt to have your thesis published by a publisher, independent of the procedure for obtaining a doctoral degree. If you are able to present a publishing publication or a publishing contract within the three years, this is a sufficient reason for blocking the dissertation on ZORA for an unlimited period of time. Unlimited blocking can also be applied for in the case of other legal restrictions (e.g. regarding image rights).

Please apply for publication with your PhD thesis transformed into an integral PDF-A (archivable PDF, please find instructions below) via Online PhD Admin Services.

There are three options for the publication on ZORA: 

1. immediate publication of the full text online, i.e. publicly available
2. immediate publication of the full text in the UZH-internal web, i.e. only available with UZH shortname
3. Blocking of full text for three years. After three years the full text will be publicly available

Option 3 is recommended if you attempt to have your thesis published by a publisher at a later time.

Cumulative Dissertation:

• If an already published article may not be publicly accessible, you can use the corresponding template for already published articles (see below.) The DOI (Digital Object Identifier) corresponds to the permalink on which the article was published in the journal.
• If a submitted or accepted article may not yet be publicly accessible, select the above-mentioned option 3 "Blocking of full text of the dissertation for 3 years" for publication on ZORA.

Please note:

• After the publication on ZORA the doctorate is completed. No further changes of the uploaded PhD thesis are possible.
• If, in addition to the publication on ZORA, a publisher's publication appears, the publisher's version may not include a print note in the imprint identifying it as a PhF dissertation (since the doctoral procedure has already been completed with the publication on ZORA).

Documents:

Instructions PDF-A (German) (PDF, 1 MB)
Instructions PDF-A (English) (PDF, 1 MB)
Template Titlepage English (PDF, 282 KB)
Template Titlepage German (PDF, 189 KB)
Template cumulative Dissertation (page for already published articles) (English) (PDF, 213 KB)
Template cumulative Dissertation (page for already published articles) (German) (PDF, 162 KB)

Once your publication request has been approved, you do not need to take any further action. The Dean's Office, Study Degrees Team, forwards the dissertation to your main supervisor for approval. Your final documents will then be drawn up and your dissertation published on ZORA.

Publication with a Publisher

If you do not want to publish your PhD thesis on ZORA you can publish it with a publisher as a transitional solution. Before press, the print version of the PhD thesis, in particular the note in the publishing information, the book cover and jacket text, must be approved by the Office of Student Affairs.

You must apply for approval online via Online PhD Admin Services. If you fail to obtain approval and the information in the printed version is incorrect or incomplete, the entire run must be corrected. 

The entire print run must bear the following note in German or English in the publishing information:

«Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde von der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Zürich im Frühjahrssemester 20[..]/Herbstsemester 20[..] auf Antrag der Promotionskommission [namentliche Aufzählung aller Mitglieder; die oder der Vorsitzende der Kommission ist in Klammern als «hauptverantwortliche Betreuungsperson» zu kennzeichnen] als Dissertation angenommen.»

«This work was accepted as a PhD thesis by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Zurich in the spring/fall semester 20 [...] on the recommendation of the Doctoral Committee: [followed by a list of all committee members; the chairperson of the committee must be identified in brackets as the «main supervisor»].»

If you publish your PhD thesis with a publisher you must submit two deposit copies to the Office of Student Affairs. You must also submit one deposit copy directly to the library of the institute or department offering the PhD subject.

In terms of quality assurance, a sound plagiarism check by the principal supervisor is central for UZH.

UZH provides the plagiarism detection software Similarity by Turnitin for this purpose: https://www.teaching.uzh.ch/de/infrastruktur/plagiate.html. We recommend the use of this software whenever it seems helpful. If you have any questions regarding the use of the software, please feel free to contact the Graduate School (graduiertenschule@phil.uzh.ch).

From the moment you submit deposit copies until you receive your final records it generally takes up to 8 weeks. 

First you’ll receive confirmation of your doctoral degree, and then a few weeks later the Degree Office will send you your diploma documents. The compulsory matriculation requirement applies until the doctorate is conferred (the date of the diploma).

You may only use the title of Dr. phil. once you have received confirmation of your doctoral degree.

To celebrate doctoral degrees every year the faculty holds a graduation ceremony to which friends and family members are also invited. The ceremony is open only to graduates who have published in the specified academic year. 

Graduation ceremony for graduates who published the dissertation in fall semester 2024 or spring semester 2025: 26 September 2025.