Completion of the Doctorate and Publication

Defense
The defense marks the conclusion of the doctoral procedure, though not yet the completion of the doctoral degree itself. During the defense, you will present your dissertation or key points from it in a presentation lasting approximately 20 minutes. This will be followed by a discussion with the examination committee and the reviewers.
You must submit your thesis abstract ten days before your defense. The thesis abstract should summarize the key findings of your dissertation that you intend to present during your presentation. It therefore serves as a kind of presentation handout.

Publication
To complete your doctoral degree and be entitled to use the academic title “Dr. phil.” or “Ph.D.,” you must publish your dissertation. The final version to be published must be approved by the examination committee, which may require changes to the original manuscript. 

• by a commercial publisher,
• by an academic journal,
• electronically via the University Library's  publication server,
• by submitting ten printed copies to the University Library (if parts of the thesis have already been published, the number is six).

The copies or file to be published must be labeled as a dissertation; the title page must include the topic, the author’s name, the statement “submitted to the Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Potsdam,” and the year of submission; the back of the title page must include the names of the reviewers and the date of the defense.

Certificate 
The doctoral degree is conferred upon publication. The diploma will be issued within approximately four weeks of publication. You may choose between a German-language diploma with the academic degree “Dr. phil.” and an English-language diploma with the academic degree “Ph.D.” Both academic degrees are equivalent, but the “Ph.D.” is better known and more widely recognized in an international context.