Guidelines for PhD candidates
- Colloquium. PhD students are expected to present their work once every two years at the local Computer Science colloquium. These presentations should be in English, and should be coordinated well in advance with the student's supervisor, to make sure that the supervisor can be present. The aim is to provide the PhD student with an opportunity to exercise his/her presentation skills, in an environment which is (intended to be) comparable to an international conference. The presentation should be evaluated in detail---not just in the elevator back to one's office---by the student and his/her supervisor.
The initiative for such a presentation comes in principle from the organisers of the colloquium (see the colloquium webpage for who they are). But a PhD student who is ready to present his/her work can of course also contact them directly.
- Supervision.Each PhD student is expected to meet his/her supervisor once a week for at least half an hour, in order to discuss the student's research, progress, possible difficulties, publications, etc. Please be aware that your supervisor performs a service to you, and has been assigned to do so. This means that he or she is not so much your “boss”, as someone who helps you out in what, after all, is your PhD effort. This means that you are yourself chiefly responsible for your research and your book, and for making sure you get proper supervision. So if you are not satisfied with it, it is up to you to discuss it with your supervisor, your promotor, or the PhD coordinator. A good piece of advice to all PhD students: manage your supervisor!
- Co-authorship. Joint publications between a PhD student and his/her supervisor are a delicate matter, which should be handled with care and restraint. There are general guidelines (for example, in the biomedical world) for such matters, which are translated to the following rules for the Computer Science Department at Nijmegen (approved by the management council, 13 march 2001).
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article. Authorship credit should be based only on
- substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
- drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
- final approval of the version to be published.
Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must all be met. Acquisition of funding, the collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, by themselves, do not justify authorship. Authors should provide a description of what each contributed, and editors should publish that information. All others who contributed to the work who are not authors should be named in Acknowledgements, and what they did should be described.
In case of conflict, the PhD-coordinator or director of the institute may be asked to intervene by any of the parties involved.
- Foreign visits. In order to maximize their international orientation and research experience, PhD students are strongly encouraged to spend a few months abroad, visiting a relevant research institute. Plans for such a visit should be discusses well in advance with the supervisor (also involving financial support). The third year of the PhD is usually good timing.
Back to the PhD overview page.