International Doctoral Research Component

To qualify for this component the following conditions must be met:

INTERNATIONAL STAY

Students must undertake a stay of at least three months outside Spain at one or more prestigious higher education institutions or research centres, where they have taken a course or conducted research.

The stay may be undertaken over different periods, provided the total amount of time is at least three months (90 days). Remember that one of the stays must be at least one month.

The stay must be made within the training period necessary to obtain the title of doctor, that is, during the period in which you have been enrolled in the doctoral program.

The coordination team of your doctoral program, your academic tutor and your thesis supervisors must authorize your stay.

It is recommended to contract the complementary mobility insurance together with the registration of the course in which the stay will take place. If the stay is in the United Kingdom, check with the embassy for specific requirements.

Before starting your stay you have to contact the INSS (Social Security) to know if your stay requires any procedure or special requirement to enjoy health coverage abroad. If the INSS requires you, you must carry out the corresponding procedures. Check this link to travel abroad.

You can check the mobility aids at this link.

You can check the information of the international joint supervision in this link.

LANGUAGES OF DRAFTING AND DEFENSE OF THE DOCTORAL THESIS

Part of the doctoral thesis, at least the abstract and the conclusions, must be in a language that is customarily used in that field for the purpose of scientific communication and is not one of the official languages of Spain.

This rule does not apply when the stays, the reports and the experts are from a Spanish-speaking country (different from Spain). By origin is meant the membership of experts in a higher education institution or research center.

Remember that the conclusions and abstract must be included in the body of the thesis and duly identified in the table of contents.

INTERNATIONAL REPORTS

Students will no longer have to incorporate the expert reports for this mention at the time of deposit, since these will be the same as the external assessors. Remember that the informants for this research component must be from foreign institutions.

THESIS EXAMINING BOARD

At least one PhD holder who belongs to a higher education institution or research centre outside Spain, other than the coordinator of the stay referred to in the first section, must have been a member of the thesis examining board. It is recommended to also appoint a substitute member from a foreign institution.

There are situations of incompatibilities between people involved in these requirements:

Incompatibilities with the external evaluator and an examining board member

	External evaluators's report	Examining board member
Supervisor/academic tutor of the stay in the International Doctoral Research Component	No	No
Other members of the institutions where the stay took place in the International Doctoral Research Component	Yes	Yes
Co-author	No	No
Thesis supervisor	No	No*
External evaluator	Yes	Yes
* in case of cotutelle, yes, if indicated in the agreement.

The processing of the research component is carried out together with the deposit of the doctoral thesis. Check the deposit website to see how to incorporate the documentation into the application.

• Required documentation:
  • Certificate of stay, issued by the host institution, in its official paper and in which the start and end dates of the activity are indicated in addition to the person who has tutored you. Example of a sample certificate of stay.
    You must attach it as activity type 4 (Research stays in national or foreign, public or private centers) of the activities document. In the case of international joint supervision, the stay certificate may be the same as that of the joint supervision, but it cannot be signed by the thesis supervisor of the other university (it can be signed by the person in charge of the centre, department, etc.). For this situation, check the specific activities for joint supervision that you will also have to introduce.
  • Two reports from international experts, who will also be the external assessors of your doctoral thesis. The coordination team of your doctoral programme will request the reports from the assessors. It will only be necessary that, during the online deposit, you upload the suitability document of these assessors.
• Languages of the documents:
  • The documents submitted must be in Catalan, Spanish or English.
  • Documents in French, Italian or Portuguese: a translation by the Language Service of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona can be supplied.
  • Documents in other languages: a translation into Catalan or Spanish must be provided, carried out by a sworn translator who is duly authorised or registered in Spain. A list of sworn translators is available on this link.

Approximately 10 days after the defense, you will be able to check in your academic record that the option "Meets all the requirements of the European / International Research Component" is checked.:

If you did not find in this page the information you need, you can contact the Doctoral School at tesis@uab.cat (if you send an email, you must identify yourself by indicating your ID / passport, NIU, name and surname).

• Report template for external assessors