How to nominate your examiners

robyn.owens — Tue, 01 May 2007 02:06:00 GMT

I seem to signing approval to lots of examiners at the moment, so I thought a post on the process might be useful.

The nomination of the examiners for a doctoral or masters thesis is the formal responsibility of the Head of School, but it is done in conjunction with the candidate and the supervisor and is usually signed off by the School's Graduate Research Coordinator, who has delegated signing authority for the Head of School.

For PhDs, four examiners must be nominated: three preferred examiners and one reserve. At least two must be external to WA and none can come from UWA or have any formal contact with UWA (e.g., be an Adjunct appointment or an Emeritus Professor). For Masters, three examiners must be nominated: two preferred and one reserve and at least one external to WA.

Of the nine examiners currently sitting before me for approval, 5 are from the US, 2 from the UK, 1 from France, 1 from NSW and 1 from WA. In some later post I will give a fuller analysis of where all our examiners come from.

The examiners must available, expert and independent.

Thus, as part of the process for nomination, you (or the School) needs to contact the examiners to ensure that they are willing and able to undertake the examination within the allocated 6 weeks they are given from receipt of the thesis.

The nomination form should assure me that they are active expert researchers in the field. This usually involves giving me a one paragraph statement saying what their expertise is and what their contributions to the field have been, along with a selected list of recent publications. It is important to remember that what is written here eventually helps the Board of the Graduate Research School understand the context of all the examiners' reports and reach a final classification. For example, if you claim a particular examiner is the world expert in your topic, then that examiner's opinion may carry more weight than one who is more to the side of the field or a more junior researcher. Normally, such considerations are only needed when the examiners are in conflict.

The nomination form should also include a statement addressing the independence of the examiner. For example, "There is no issue with regard to the independence of this examiner, nor any prior working relationship with the candidate." Thus, examiners who would be excluded include anyone with whom you have worked, published with, or anyone who has a professional or personal relationship with the supervisor or School that could be seen to create a bias in the examination process. Sometimes an examiner is nominated who has published with your supervisor; this is not necessarily a problem if the topic is separate from your thesis topic and the examiner has had no professioanl or personal relationship with you.

theEzone : Nomination

How to nominate your examiners