Towards the end of the PhD phase the student has to hand in a summary of the thesis before the final thesis is submitted. With this summary the faculty should be informed that the PhD process has nearly been completed, which results have been achieved and that the student followed the PhD subject. This gives the faculty the opportunity to make suggestions before the final thesis is handed in.

Apart from the time restriction, there are no subsequent obligations for the PhD student.

The summary must be handed in at least four months and no longer than eight months before the thesis. If the thesis isn't submitted within this eight month time limit, a new summary must be submitted. Due to the PhD regulations, the four month waiting period then begins again.*) (this has been changed - see below)

A printed and an electronic version of the summary (PDF file as an e-mail attachment to dekanat@cs.uni-kl.de) must be handed in to the dean's office. The printed version must be signed, only. Please send your pdf file as a simple printout but not as a scan.

The summary contains

• a description of the results of the PhD (maximum 2 pages)
  (The faculty expects at least three peer reviewed papers related to the PhD. Otherwise, the supervisor has to explain the quality of the PhD).
• a list of the publications resulting from the PhD
• the planned structure of the thesis
• a declaration from the PhD student and the supervisor that the PhD subject was adhered to.

The summary is handed out to all professors of the faculty who may comment on it within four weeks.

*) There are two reasons for the deadlines. On the one hand the Ph.D. students have to advise their Ph.D. process in good time (lower limit). On the other hand the summaries have to be up-to-date (upper limit).

This often causes administrative problems because there are sometimes long periods of time between faculty council meetings. In order to minimize problems, the faculty council decided in its meeting on 4 June 2014 to manage the deadlines as follows:

• The deadline for the upper limit (8 months) is the time when the thesis is handed in to the dean's office (instead of at the faculty council meeting). As the thesis subject won't change anymore, the summary and the thesis won't diverge too much.
• If the summary does have to be handed in again, the waiting period is reduced to 1 month in contrast to the PhD regulations because the Ph.D. process was already announced when it was handed in for the first time.