Dear Students,
Pursuant to the decision of the Senate of Middle East Technical University dated 5 February 2026:
Effective from the Spring Semester of the 2025–2026 Academic Year, students who have not yet passed the doctoral qualifying examination are required to meet the minimum publication requirement specified below in order to be eligible to take the doctoral dissertation defense. Students who have reached the stage of taking the dissertation defense but have not yet met the publication requirement may be granted a leave of absence by the relevant Graduate School Administrative Board, for one semester at a time and for a maximum of four semesters, in order to fulfill the requirement.
Minimum Publication Requirement for Taking the Doctoral Dissertation Defense
In order to be eligible to take the doctoral dissertation defense, students must fulfill at least one of the following requirements in relation to their doctoral field of study or dissertation research:
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An article published or accepted for publication in a journal indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) or Scopus databases;
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A book or book chapter indexed in the WoS or Scopus databases (excluding those consisting of conference proceedings);
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A full-text paper presented at a conference that ranks among the top 100 in the overall ranking or top 20 in the subfield ranking, according to the h5-index rankings published by Google Scholar Metrics, and published in full text;
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A national or international registered patent or a patent application that has received a positive PCT report;
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A full-text paper presented at an international congress indexed by WoS or Scopus, or at an international congress that has been held at least 10 times, and published in full text.
* The relevant Departmental Academic Executive Boards may introduce additional requirements in addition to the minimum requirements specified above. The relevant implementation principles and ethical codes shall be determined by the Graduate School Boards.