Writing your Doctoral Thesis

There are some formal aspects worth considering before you start to write your doctoral thesis.

General Aspects

• The title page must comply with the regulations of Appendix 2 of the Rector's Implementation Provisions for the Doctorate Ordinance. See also: Dissertation Title Page (Template) (PDF, 24 kB).
  
• The doctoral thesis must include an abstract in an official Swiss language and in English, as well as a CV. Out of discretion it is possible to leave out the CV in the electronic version.
  
• Make sure your quotes and references are correct when literally or figuratively using paragraphs, images, charts, etc. from other works. See also "Citation etiquette", plagiarism notice (PDF, 126 kB).
• For copyright reasons it is only allowed to quote paragraphs, images, charts, etc. from other works if the quotation serves as an explanation, a reference or illustration and the extent of the quotation is justified for such purpose (Copyright Law art. 25¹). In all other cases you must have the authorisation of the owner of the right of reproduction.
• The title and content of the doctoral thesis may not be altered after approval by the Department Conference. (Rector's Implementation Provisions, section 9).
  

Copyrights

• The copyright of a doctoral thesis belongs to the author, or rather the doctoral student (Ordinance on Doctoral Studies, art. 34).
  • Upon delivery of the electronic version of the doctoral thesis, the ETH Zurich may make it available to the public and process it for archival purposes, unless otherwise provided by a written statement of the candidate or by third party rights (Art. 34 para. 5 of the Ordinance on Doctoral Studies ETH Zürich).
• The author, or rather the doctoral student may entirely or partially transfer the rights of use for his work (e.g. to a publisher).
• We advise against transferring your rights of use entirely. Instead, you should make sure to retain some contractually accorded rights (e.g. the right to reproduce and distribute copies or to distribute the work electronically). Here you can find such an agreement (PDF, 112 kB).

Cumulative Doctoral Thesis

A cumulative doctoral thesis incorporates articles which have already been published or submitted for publication¹. In order to avoid a violation of the copyrights or the rights of use (in case of self-archiving on Open Access) of the publisher, it is important to keep the following in mind:

• Before printing the doctoral thesis, the author, or rather the doctoral student must clarify with the respective publisher the possible ways and conditions of further using the work. These are part of the publication agreement. They may also be found through the so-called Sherpa-Romeo-List.
• We advise you to check in advance if there are more rights or agreements involved (e.g. with the SNSF or with another foundation).
• In most cases the preprint version (original version prior to review) may be used without any problems.
• You may only add articles to the doctoral thesis in the postprint version (reviewed original version) if the copyright allows it.
• Most publishers will not allow further use of the final version or the published article unless you compensate the respective rights like in the case of special reproduction.
• It is possible that the publishers ask for additional explanations.
• In the case of more than one author, all co-authors must also agree to the redistribution.

As concerns archiving, loaning and further using the printed or electronic version of doctoral theses, the ETH library depends on the above mentioned points being considered and clarified. There might be consequences for the author if the doctoral thesis does not fulfil these requirements.

Even if the electronic publication is not allowed for copyright reasons, it must be submitted along with a waiver for publication in the e-collection.

¹ cp. point 8 b of the Rector's Implementation Provisions for the Doctorate Ordinance