PhD policy: recommendations and best practices

Having a proper policy on PhD candidates in place helps doctoral candidates to go through their PhD trajectory as smoothly as possible, which benefits both the candidate and the institute that they are affiliated with. Such policy measures can be defined either in the doctoral regulations (‘promotiereglement’) or in separate policy documents.

In this brief report, Promovendi Netwerk Nederland (PhD Network Netherlands; PNN) lists several PhD policy recommendations, grouped into six different categories. PNN believes these recommendations should be an integral part of any institute-wide PhD policy. Currently this is not the case: although all Dutch research institutes have defined policy measures related to PhD candidates, the exact policies vary between institutes and generally do not cover all points that PNN finds essential.

PNN would like to remark that for postdocs, the situation is generally worse: many Dutch research institutes have no postdoc policy or vision at all. PNN believes that universities should consider formulating a postdoc policy that aligns with existing PhD policy documents. However, as PNN represents PhD candidates, the focus of this document is on doctoral candidates only.

If PNN was aware of any institutes where a particular policy recommendation is already (partly) in place, the name of that institute and the way in which the policy recommendation is implemented there is also provided. Hence, this document is both a list of recommended policy measures as well as an overview of best practices.

Please note that the best practices overview is in no way exhaustive: if an institute is not mentioned, it does not automatically imply that this institute does not have the policy recommendation in place.

Read the report here.