Supervising Doctoral and Postdoctoral Researchers

As emphasized in the fifth Salzburg Principle on doctoral education, supervision plays a crucial role:

“In respect of individual doctoral candidates, arrangements for supervision and assessment should be based on a transparent contractual framework of shared responsibilities between doctoral candidates, supervisors and the institution (and where appropriate including other partners).”

“Providing professional development to supervisors is an institutional responsibility, whether organised through formal training or informal sharing of experiences among staff. Developing a common supervision culture shared by supervisors, doctoral school leaders and doctoral candidates must be a priority for doctoral schools” (Salzburg II Recommendations: European universities' achievements since 2005 in implementing the Salzburg Principles, 2010).

The University of Basel also attaches great importance to the support of early stage researchers and lists this as one of the tasks of a professor in the regulation for academic personnel at the University of Basel (OWP, §12). The tasks of the assistants are also defined in the OWP (§24).

The University of Basel provides a template for doctoral and postdoctoral agreements in order to monitor the research project. The doctoral agreement must be completed within the first six months of the doctorate and serves as a progress summary and to plan the PhD project. As part of the revision of the employment and supervision process, a postdoctoral agreement was introduced which should also be completed within the first six months of the postdoc phase. The templates are available in the section Agreements and Regulations.

Since January 01, 2020, the employment and supervision processes of doctoral candidates and postdocs at the University of Basel have been combined into a single process that applies to all doctoral students and postdocs, regardless of their employment status. The aim of the process is to ensure good, transparent and equal conditions for all parties involved during the qualification phase. An overview of the processes can be found in the section Agreements and Regulations.

The University of Basel expects its members to respect the personal integrity of others and to follow the rules of good scientific practice. The most important information on personal and scientific integrity is summarized in the section Integrity and Diversity.

The University of Basel is a member of the Council for Doctoral Education (CDE) of the European University Association (EUA).

Literature and Publications