Submission and examination

The candidate must submit an HDR - Intention to Submit form to the Office of Research & Innovation (ORI) copied to the Principal Supervisor.

On the Intention to Submit form, students may list examiners, disciplines, or groups that they do not wish to examine their thesis. 

If you have not organised copyright permission (if applicable) and completed a HDR - Co-Authorship Approvals for HDR Thesis for Examinations for any publications included in your thesis, now is the time to finalise that.

The Principal Supervisor must submit the HDR - Recommendation of Examiners Form to the Faculty or Institute in which the candidate is enrolled (the Home Faculty), which must be endorsed by the Faculty/ Menzies and the Dean of Graduate Studies.

Examiners are paid a small honorarium after the examination (2025 rate = $420 per PhD examiner).

Supervisors must declare any conflict of interest and may be asked to nominate additional examiners if an examiner is deemed to be biased by an actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest with the candidate or any member of the supervisory panel. 

NOTE: Students are not permitted to nominate or know the examiners of their thesis although they should be asked if there are any potential examiners that they do not want their thesis sent to and why or any potential conflicts of interest.

Prior to submission of thesis

Thesis Including Publications or Other Third-Party Copyright Material

If your thesis includes material owned by a third party or previously published work, you must ensure that appropriate permissions and acknowledgements are in place. This includes:

• Previously published work (including your own)
• Co-authored publications
• Images, graphs, diagrams, maps, tables, charts
• Large blocks of quoted text or templates (e.g. surveys)

1. Copyright Permissions

You must obtain and retain evidence of copyright ownership or written permission to reproduce any third-party material. This is essential for both examination and repository deposit.

If your thesis includes sections of your own previously published work, you still need to:

• Confirm you hold the copyright, or
• Provide formal permission from the publisher.

See Copyright for Researchers for more information.

2. Co-Authored Publications and Thesis Integrity

If your thesis includes co-authored or published material, it is essential that the overall thesis presents a clear, coherent and original contribution to knowledge attributable to you. Examiners must be able to determine your unique intellectual input.

To support this:

• You must submit a HDR - Co-Authorship Approvals for HDR Thesis for Examinations form for each publication included in the thesis.
• These forms must detail your contribution and be signed by all co-authors.
• One form is required per publication, and all forms must be uploaded at the time of thesis submission.
• These forms must be accompanied by any relevant copyright permissions.

Note: The inclusion of published or co-authored work must not compromise the requirement that a thesis demonstrates a significant original contribution by the candidate.

All current candidates and principal supervisors should have access to iThenticate. Students are sent their login details to their student email account (sxxxxxx@students.cdu.edu.au). 

The candidate must run a similarity report in iThenticate on the draft thesis to check for potential plagiarism. The supervisor and candidate must check each instance of similarity in the report to ensure all work is correctly attributed and edit the thesis if required to avoid potential plagiarism.

The candidate then generates a similarity report on the FINAL version of the thesis through iThenticate and uploads the thesis and report with the Thesis Submission Declaration & Approval Form - see below for more details.

Need help accessing and using iThenticate? Visit our iThenticate page

Research candidates submits the HDR - Theses Submission Declaration & Approval Form and upload their thesis in PDF format unless otherwise required by the nature of the thesis.

The candidate is to upload with the Thesis Submission Declaration & Approval Form:

• all relevant signed co-authorship forms (if applicable);
• any copyright permissions required, (if applicable);
• the final version of the iThenticate similarity report 

Please email research.degrees@cdu.edu.au if you need a record of the Research Enhancement Program workshops you completed during the candidature to include in the declaration.

The examiners have 4-6 weeks to return their report. If either examiner report is not received after 4 weeks, ORI will approach a third approved examiner. If the report is still not received by 6 weeks, the thesis will be sent to the 3rd examiner. 

Examiners who return their report will be paid a small honorarium, once they fill in the relevant payment paperwork sent to them by ORI.

The reports will be evaluated, and an outcome will be determined.

The candidate will be notified of the outcome.  The result may be: