When do I need to submit the declaration and to whom?

When you hand in your doctoral thesis to the departmental office (initiating the doctoral assessment process), a declaration must be appended. This declaration must:

  • confirm that the electronic version and printed copy are identical (see versioning),
  • declare whether or not the candidate has already been examined for a doctorate,
  • address the issue of copyright
    (please see the document for Copyright in Academic Work (opens in new tab) of the BMBF)
  • confirm that the candidate is transferring the necessary publication rights to the Technischen Universität Darmstadt,
  • guarantee that the thesis will be published on time. This declaration also secures the publication of the thesis within the publication deadline (within one year following the viva voce) in case there is a problem publishing the thesis as a book. In this instance, the transfer of rights makes it very easy to fall back on an electronic publication, provided that agreements with the publisher allow this or can be waived.

You can find a template here. (opens in new tab)

Additionally, each thesis contains a declaration that the thesis is all your own work and that all references used have been listed (§ 9 Abs.1 S. 6 PO/AT). This declaration as text forms part of the doctoral thesis. The phrases of the template can be used (“I have included a list of all references used in my doctoral thesis. I hereby declare that I have, with the exception of the help that has been clearly mentioned in the thesis, completed this work on my own.”).