The doctoral thesis shall consist of an original research paper conducted by the candidate in any field of knowledge, enabling the doctoral student to work independently in the field of RDI.

Guarantee of Originality

The Spanish University Student Statute, approved by Royal Decree 1791/2010, of 30 December, establishes (article 7) the right of students to recognition of the authorship of the works produced and to the protection of their intellectual property, as well as the duty to refrain from the use or cooperation in fraudulent procedures in its creation (article 13).

Beyond the protection granted to authors by the Spanish Law on Intellectual Property (Royal Legislative Decree 1/1996, of 12 April), and without going into the criminal offences that may be incurred by those who plagiarise a literary, artistic or scientific work (article 270 of the Spanish Criminal Code), the conduct of information seeking must be governed by ethical rules that allow respect for others, congruence of actions and rigorous honesty in research to be maintained at all times.

In order to provide researchers with guidelines that will help them to banish bad practices in the academic world, avoiding any damage to authorship and exploitation rights, the following preventive measures should be read prior to the deposit of the Thesis:

1. Upon deposition of the thesis, and together with the affidavit of originality, a report signed by the supervisor/s which guarantees the originality of the work shall be submitted. As a general rule, the pdf copy of the anti-plagiarism tool of the university, together with an explanatory report from the director justifying the originality of the thesis, is considered a guarantee report, said report being mandatory, but not binding. In no case shall the deposit be considered definitive if any of these documents are not included.
2. The supervisors, in case of difficulty, may request EIDUCAM to provide them with said report, for which they must provide the final text of the thesis in pdf format.
3. Having received the reports, the Committee of the corresponding programme shall decide, in the act of approval of the Thesis deposit, whether or not to accept the final deposit. To do this, they can grant an audience to both the doctoral student and the supervisor, or request a report from experts both on anti-plagiarism measures and on the subject under research.