Cumulative Dissertation

A special type of doctorate is the so called cumulative dissertation. While a traditional doctorate finishes with one doctoral thesis, a cumulative dissertation consists of various publications which are then combined to one complete work and evaluated.

The publications are normally papers, articles etc. which have been published in renowned (“peer reviewed”) professional journals. The presented publications are evaluated and chosen by qualified experts (“peer reviewer”). Thereby the review secures that the publications meet the standards of renowned professional journals and conferences.

Furthermore the prestige of professional journals is connected with the Journal Impact Factor (JIL). The JIL does not make statements about the quality of an article but measures the frequency with which an article in a journal has been cited in a given period of time in other journals. Nevertheless it is important to note that a comparison can be difficult because of different citation rates within different research fields. In spite of that a high JIL increases the prestige of professional journals.

If scientific work is published depends on many different factors. Therefore a cumulative dissertation is often less calculable concerning time schedules than a traditional dissertation. In principle, publications are important for a traditional dissertation as well, but they are not as important for a traditional dissertation as for a cumulative dissertation.

Up to now cumulative dissertations are rather rare at German universities and no standardised method does exist for German-speaking countries. The respective conditions can be found in the regulations for doctoral studies of the respective university.