3. Thesis examination

Why hasn’t my RDM status changed from “Graduate school is assigning examiners” even though I submitted more than one month ago?

When your RDM status says "Graduate School is assigning examiners", this means that one or both of your examiners have yet to respond to our invitation to examine your thesis. There are a few steps involved in securing examiners.  We need to have them accept our invite, supply their completed acceptance form, and be assessed for any potential conflicts of interest. If your exam is confidential, they must sign a confidentiality agreement. This can cause delays of up to two weeks or more.  

The Graduate School Team sends two reminders to nominated examiners. If a response is not received after the reminders, we will move down the list provided by your Principal Advisor to the next examiner. If the last name on the list is not available, we will contact your Principal Advisor to nominate additional examiners for your thesis.

To avoid delays in securing examiners, we encourage principal advisors to reach out to potential examiners informally to confirm their availability before formally nominating them. It is also essential the details provided are correct.  Students and advisors, when considering potential examiners, should consult UQ’s conflict of interest policy to ensure they avoid nominating someone with whom they have a COI. More information on nominating examiners can be found on the thesis preparation website.

If your status has not changed in a month, we could be experiencing issues securing your examiners. Please email us if this occurs at our Graduate School address so that we can check on why there are delays and keep you informed.

Why are examiners taking so long to review my thesis?

Examiners are asked to review your thesis and provide feedback within 5-6 weeks (PhD), 4-5 weeks (MPhil).  This is a relatively short period of time to examine a thesis, especially when balancing complex schedules and workloads. Due to this, it is not uncommon for an examiner to request additional time; rather than having to move to a new examiner, we are happy to give a short extension where we can.   On rare occasions, examiners have to withdraw due to unforeseen circumstances; in these cases, we need to invite a new examiner, which can also cause additional delays.

Returning reports quickly is as important to us as it is to you.  Due to this, the Graduate School contacts overdue examiners weekly. If they do not respond or fail to submit their report after nine weeks, we will contact your Principal Advisor to supply additional examiner nominations. If you would like the Graduate School to move on to a new examiner any earlier than this, please consult with your Principal Advisor and/or DHDR before emailing the Graduate School to outline your request. We will need their support before moving on.

To avoid lengthy unforeseen delays, we strongly encourage Principal Advisors to informally discuss availability with prospective examiners before nominating them and to check in with them should your expected thesis submission date change.  It is essential that you do not have any contact with them from the lead-up to your submission until you join them for your oral exam.

I’m still waiting for my oral exam to be scheduled. What should I do?

Once you have received your examiner reports, your chair of Examiners will receive an email from the Graduate School providing them with all of the materials they need to organise your oral examination. The Chair will liaise directly with examiners to schedule your oral examination, and the Graduate School is also available to assist with scheduling should the Chair request assistance.

Please note: Scheduling the oral can take time, depending on examiner availability and differences in time zones, and your flexibility is greatly appreciated to help minimise delays.

If you have not heard from your Chair two weeks after receiving your examiner reports, please get in touch with them directly via email. If you do not receive a response from your Chair, please contact the Graduate School.

Under no circumstances should you, as the candidate, contact your examiners. This would create a conflict of interest that could jeopardise your examination.

If your Chair is no longer available, they will advise the Graduate School and Principal Advisor so that a replacement Chair can be sourced. This may delay your oral exam by several weeks. You will be notified if this happens.

When can I receive my "degree requirements met" letter?

You will receive your “degree requirements met” letter once you have received an examination outcome and completed all pre-conferral steps outlined below. Please note: the Graduate School cannot provide a “degree requirements met” or conferral letter prior to when you reach this milestone. UQ’s student centre team can provide certified documents including one that can be edited to include specific text. You can request a letter that explains exactly where you are in the examination process if you need to supply evidence to a workplace or funding body.   A list of documents and how to request them can be found on the Certified Documents page.

The timeline for conferral depends on your examination outcome. Your outcome will provide you with a detailed timeline and outline any required changes. If changes are required, you will need to submit your revised thesis through UQRDM. Your Chair will then consider your changes and, if satisfied that they address the examiner's concerns, endorse them. Once endorsed by your Chair, the Dean will make a final decision on your examination outcome.

After your corrections have been approved, the following pre-conferral steps must be taken:

1. You will be asked to submit your final thesis to UQRDM.
2. Your PA will check and approve in UQRDM, as well as confirm whether the thesis should be placed under embargo or left open access.
3. The Graduate School will review it to ensure it meets requirements (e.g., the preliminary pages are correct, the thesis can be downloaded, etc.).
4. We will update your record when your thesis meets the requirements. This will send you an automated message asking you to log into SI-net, provide your 100-word abstract for your Australian Higher Education Graduation Statement (AHEGS), and review your thesis title. This is essential; we cannot continue without it. 
5. If you have not already done so, provide your Unique Student Identifier (USI) in SI-net or have an exemption recorded (if overseas). Most students have already registered their USI by this stage.  If you have not done so yet, you can do it now.,
6. Your Orcid ID should already be set up and linked to your student account. If you have not done so, please do so now.

Once you have completed the above, we will be able to issue you a “degree requirements met” letter and add you to the following conferral list for Provost approval. You will be advised via email when we will submit the list to the Provost for conferral, and you will receive another notification once you have been officially conferred. Conferrals occur once a fortnight.

Why can’t I track my examination progress through unitask?

The Graduate School is upgrading the examination process by moving it all into the UQRDM where candidates will have better visibility of the process.  Due to this upgrade, you can no longer track your examination via the online HDR Thesis Examination (HTE) task in my.UQ. The HTE task is still initiated by the Graduate School when progress review three (PR3) is attained so your Principal Advisor can nominate examiners, any conflict of interests for you or your PA can be declared, and you can upload a thesis abstract that we will then send to prospective examiners with our formal invitations.

After examiners have been nominated, the HTE task will not be updated. All elements of the examination process will be carried out manually. You should check your RDM status for updates and/or contact the Graduate School for further updates on your examination as it progresses – the HTE will not update.

You may receive new unitask requests from the Graduate School if additional examiner nominations are required.

Can I receive one report while waiting for the second?

No. Examiners usually submit their reports at different times, and we need to review both reports before sending them to you in case the reports are discordant. If this occurs, they will be sent to the Dean for internal review before you are issued your examiner reports to prepare for your oral. Candidates are not permitted to make any thesis corrections before their oral examination.

Why am I still being charged SSAF despite submitting my thesis?

If you hold an active living allowance scholarship paid fortnightly by the Graduate School, you will not be recorded as submitted in your HDR panel in mySI-Net.   Scholarship payments can only be made to active students, so we cannot mark you as officially submitted until either the scholarship expires or your oral exam, whichever occurs first.  Your thesis will be recorded as officially submitted once your scholarship ends.  As you are still actively enrolled and receiving a scholarship, please continue paying the SSAF Fees until your thesis is officially submitted.  Any overdue SSAF fees will prevent you from being conferred.

Do I delete my original thesis document when I submit my corrections in UQRDM?

Yes. Please delete your original thesis and upload your corrected thesis under Thesis Document. Then, please upload your separate list of corrections under the Corrections File.

Why can’t my Principal Advisor see an RDM request?

The Graduate School can't push notifications from RDM, but your Principal Advisor should be able to access their assigned tasks directly from their UQRDM Dashboard. They can get directly to this page by following this link: https://rdm.uq.edu.au/thesis/principal-advisor/dashboard.

How can I extend the deadline for completing my thesis corrections?

Please log into my.UQ My Requests and submit an Extend Thesis Corrections HDR request. You will be asked to provide a new corrections submission date and comments on why you need more time.   This will be sent to the Dean for consideration, so please include enough detail as to why you need more time. We will notify you of the outcome.

When can I submit my corrections and/or final thesis after completing my oral?

Your Chair of Examiners will send a recommended examination outcome following your oral exam.  That recommendation and your examination reports will be sent to the Graduate School Dean for a final decision on the overall examination outcome. Once finalised, we will send you the official examination outcome and detailed instructions on the next steps.

Can I request certain days/times for my oral examination?

You are welcome to request certain days and times by contacting your Chair. However, the day/time of your examination depends on when your examiners are available and their locations/time zones.

I received my degree requirements met letter. When can I get my testamur/official documents?

Please refer to the UQ Graduations website with regard to important information about your degree documents and graduation ceremonies: http://www.uq.edu.au/graduations/graduations-research-higher-degree-students

When do I need to decide whether to embargo my thesis and how do I make this request?

Once you have completed all required revisions and approved by the Dean of Graduate School, you will be asked to upload your final thesis to the UQRDM. When you upload your final thesis document through UQRDM, you will be asked whether you wish to embargo your thesis.

At this stage in the process, you, or your principal advisor, will need to decide access to a published thesis. In keeping with international academic practice, your thesis will be made publicly available once you have completed all the requirements for your degree. If you have assigned intellectual property rights to UQ, your principal advisor will make this choice. If you did not assign intellectual property rights to UQ, you can choose between “open access” and “thesis embargo”. Further details and information about how to request or extend an embargo post-conferral is available here.

Please review UQ’s guidelines around copyright and your thesis.