Indira Chue, staff member at the dissertations department of the University Library at Freie Universität Berlin, talks about what it really means to publish your dissertation. In this episode, she explains why publication is far more than a final formality, which publication options doctoral candidates have, how timing, formats, and costs come into play, which common formal mistakes can delay the doctoral certificate — and how to avoid them.

Audio

This interview was conducted in January 2026.

HIghlights

“Some candidates do explicitly not want online submission because they plan to publish their dissertation later on in a publishing house, and many publishing houses will not publish a work that is openly available worldwide. Not all. It is not always a hindrance for online publication, but it is a point that has to be cleared.”

Indira Chue, Hochschulsschriftenstelle (HSS) der Freie Universität Berlin

Links

Find useful links and information on finishing your doctorate here.

Transcript

Welcome to the DRS Podcast, the podcast of the Dahlem Research School at Freie Universität Berlin. My name is Dr. Marlies Klamt and I am moderating today’s episode. In this episode, I am speaking with Indira Chue, who works at the dissertations department, or Hochschulschriftenstelle in German, of the University Library at Freie Universität Berlin. This department plays a key role in the doctoral process, as it is responsible for receiving, checking, and formally confirming the publication of doctoral thesis.

Our topic today is publishing your dissertation. We talk about what publication actually means in the context of the doctoral process, why it is more than a final administrative step, and what doctoral candidates need to be aware of when it comes to timing, formats, formal requirements, and costs. In this interview, we discuss, among other things, how the publication process is embedded in the overall doctoral timeline, which publication options are available at Freie Universität Berlin, which factors play a role when deciding on a publication format, and which common mistakes can lead to delays, and how to avoid them.

Without further ado, let’s welcome Indira Chue from the dissertation department of the University Library of Freie Universität Berlin. To start, could you briefly introduce yourself and your role at the FU Berlin University Library?

My name is Indira Chue. I work at the dissertations department at Freie Universität. The dissertations department is located at the central library of the university library of the Freie Universität. And our role is to receive the dissertations of doctoral candidates since in Germany there is an obligation for doctoral candidates to make their theses available to a wider community and we are the place where these dissertations are submitted and we check them. And then if everything is correct according to the standards and to regulations of the departments then we issue the acknowledgement of receipt in digital form and then we send it to the respective examination office of the respective department by email. And then the examination office can issue the doctoral certificate. So, we are quite important for the doctoral candidates. We have an important role in helping them to get their doctoral certificate.

I certainly agree and thank you very much. That gives a clear picture of what the dissertations department is responsible for. To understand how this fits in the doctoral process as a whole, let’s now look at the typical timeline related to the publication of the doctoral thesis. Once the disputation is completed, which steps follow and in what order when it comes to publication, formal confirmation and the issuing of the doctoral certificate?

I have to say that at Freie Universität the situation is quite heterogeneous depending on what department the dissertation was submitted because the regulations are quite different. But in general, one could say after the dissertation the department has to issue the permission to print. Usually, it’s the examination board of the department and this is handled via the examination office, the Promotionsbüro. So, once it is clear that no changes content-wise have to be made and the dissertation is ready for publication, then the candidate should decide in which form the submission should take place, because in most departments there are several options to submit the dissertation.

And then, ideally, they should contact us, the dissertations department. Also, the examination offices have leaflets, which we created with information what the candidate should do. They also get the information that the candidates should contact us before they proceed in the publication process.

Thanks a lot. Yeah, I will definitely talk with you more about the differences between the departments and also the options of submission. But let’s do that later. First, I would say, I think it shows quite clearly what you said, the publication cannot be treated as something to deal with at the very last minute. And that brings us to the question of planning. In order to avoid unpleasant last-minute surprises, what kind of time frame should doctoral candidates realistically plan for once they start preparing the publication of their dissertation?

That depends very much on the case. For instance, if candidates want to publish their book with a publishing house as a book, then they have to plan far ahead with a publishing company. And there are also some important details to be known there. For instance, that the publishing house should print in all of the print run, that it is a dissertation of Freie Universität, there is a symbol D188 that indicates this, but there are also other ways of making that clear. This is one thing. Another thing is that in the copies, in case of a publishing house publication, in the copies which have to be submitted to us, the dissertation title page has to be included, and so on, and so on. And also, we need a written confirmation of the print run of at least 150 copies. So these are, for instance, things that have to be regarded in the case of this kind of publication.

In other cases, if it is an online publication, you have to bear in mind that what you upload on our dissertation server has to be checked by us, and it might be that we tell you to have some formal changes made. And then this takes a while. So, it also depends a lot on how quick the candidate can react to our requirements. But it always has to be kept in mind that there might be things that have to be corrected. And so, it is always a good idea to plan a little further ahead. Yeah, at least a few weeks.

I definitely agree with you. And I think it would be very interesting to explore a bit further what publication options are available. You already mentioned the publishing house, online publications. Could you give us a brief introduction to the publication options available to doctoral candidates at FU Berlin?

Like I said, that differs from department to department, but I can name all the publication forms that are possible, although not all of them are possible in each department. So one option is the printed and bound copies, which means one goes to a copy shop. These copies can be made in any copy shop, but they have to be glued binding, no spiral binding, no ring binding. And the number of copies that have to be submitted also depends on the department.

Then another form is microfiche copies. This is a form of micro reproduction, but not a film, but like cards. That is very often chosen if online submission is not an option due to copyright reasons. So, this is the second option. The third option is submission in a publishing house, publishing house copies. And then the fourth option is the online version. In some departments, it is the only option, actually. And by the way, in all forms of submissions, there are always printed copies involved as well.

So, if you choose the microfiche option, you need three additional printed copies, and in the case of online submission, the number of copies also varies from department to department. So mostly it’s two copies, but for some departments it’s three copies, and for some it’s seven. So, it depends. But these are the several options.

Can you tell us a little bit which factors play a role when deciding on my publication format? Well, we imagine that your department allows all of them. I’m thinking, for example, of cost, prestige, time requirements and similar aspects.

Well, it also depends. I think, in the philological or in the humanities, let’s say in some cases, a book publication is most prestigious, like, for instance, history or history and cultural studies. When it comes to art, history or archaeology, the book publication might be especially prestigious. But online publication is in one respect also very prestigious because the dissemination is very wide and citation. So, this is a very popular option. But then again, some candidates do explicitly not want online submission because they plan to publish their dissertation later on in a publishing house, and many publishing houses will not publish a work that is openly available worldwide. Not all. It is not always a hindrance for online publication, but it is a point that has to be cleared. And so for those, this is often a reason that online submission is not wanted. And like I said, in such cases, very often microfiche option is chosen.

And when it comes to the topic of costs, what do you recommend? Maybe the doctoral candidate doesn’t really care so much about the prestige. Maybe they don’t want to stay in the academic sector and they’re more interested in keeping the costs low. Can you tell us a bit how the costs differ depending on the publication option which is chosen?

In that case I would say the online sales submission is least costly, because basically you only have to print the copies. If you choose a soft cover, adhesive binding, then it’s not so expensive. And if this is not an option, for the reasons that I named before, then microfiche would be probably the next thing. Because microfiche duplication is in most cases less expensive than printed and bound copies.

I know it depends a lot on many factors, for example, the length of the dissertation, everything. But can you give us a rough idea how much we’re looking at with online publications and microfiche as well as also publishing houses? Because I think this is a cost factor many doctoral candidates are not aware of until the very end of their PhD.

Actually, no. I can’t tell you any numbers. When it comes to microfiche, there are actually only two companies that we know of that do microfiche copies, and both of them can be found on the internet, and one of them has a price list where you can enter how many pages does a dissertation have, how many copies do you need, and then it is calculated. So it has calculator on the web page. And the other one does not have such an openly public calculator, but you can write to them and they will tell you how much in your case it will cost. But unfortunately, no I cannot give any numbers.

Okay, that’s a microfiche and I think that’s maybe an option that is less known. So if you want to, you could send me via email the links to the two companies and then we could link them on the website as well so that people know where to look for the costs. And I remember I published my own dissertation in a publishing house. I don’t remember the exact number, but I remember that it was a few thousand euros. So, I think it can vary a lot as well. Obviously, it depends on a lot of things. I had a lot of images, for example, which made it more costly. I also wanted the price of the book not to be too expensive, and then I had to pay more in order to make that happen.

Maybe even just knowing that it could be a few thousand euros might help people. And are there possible options where people can get a scholarship in order to have the costs for the publication via publishing house at least partly covered?

There is, for instance, the Ernst-Reuter-Gesellschaft (link opens in German), an alumni corporation for ex-FU students. They do that. And I think the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft maybe, but I can only recommend to research about… Or there are many foundations like the foundations of the political parties, Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung, Heinrich Böll-Stiftung, foundations like that. They sometimes do that.

And from the Freie Universität, we also have a publication fund, but that only refers to open access costs if a dissertation is published in a publishing house that does open access e-books that are published under a Creative Commons license and are available open access and they can be funded by our publication method, but only the open access costs, not the printing costs and under certain conditions. One condition is that first it only applies to dissertations that have summa cum laude and also they have to be published on our repository Refubium, which if it is an open access publication is not a problem from the publishing houses side.

So, the good news is that there are options available. The bad news is people will have to do their own research, but I think it’s very valuable to know that you might get your costs at least partly covered. Something we haven’t talked about yet is how the choice of publication is affected by whether the dissertation is a monographic or cumulative dissertation. Could you tell us a bit more about that?

If it’s cumulative, it actually only matters if you want to or have to do it online. In that case, secondary publication rights of the publishing houses where the articles are published or submitted have to be observed, because the publishing house might not agree to their articles being publicly available on an institutional repository. If that is the case, then in most cases there’s the option to remove the article from the online version of the dissertation and replace it by a DOI link. Not only the identifier, the DOI, but it has to be a clickable link. But in the printed version, the articles have to be included. If you choose microfiche option or printed and bound, then it does not matter. Then the articles can be included. So for us, the question cumulative or not cumulative only matters in that respect.

Thank you very much for explaining the different options. I think we all agree that it’s a very complex topic and a lot of things need to be considered when making the decision. I would like to change the topic now a little bit and talk with you about the mistakes that can occur when dissertations are submitted for publication. What are the most common mistakes you see when dissertations are submitted for publication?

One thing is, for instance, if you do electronic dissertation, don’t have the copies printed before you have uploaded your dissertation and have it checked by us. We have to check it and there might always be formal mistakes and we might have to tell you to change something. And the same applies for instance, microfiche or printer-bound copies. It would be best if you could send us your dissertation, a PDF file of your dissertation, so that we can check it.

Most common mistakes concern the dissertation title page. The most common thing is that the date of defense is missing. It has to be either on the dissertation page itself or on the second page. Usually it’s written under the names of the referees. Another mistake is that the specific doctoral degree is not named. It is not sufficient to write for the doctoral degree, but it has to be submitted, blah blah blah, in order to obtain the degree of, for instance, Doktor der Philosophie, short Dr. Phil, or PhD. This, by the way, is also another misunderstanding. Doctor of Philosophy is not the translation of Doktor der Philosophie. These are two different titles.

Doctor of Philosophy is the long form for PhD, and this only applies if you have major dissertation, graduate school, and so usually it’s rather Doktor der Philosophie or Doctor of Natural Sciences, Doctor Rerum Naturarium. Sometimes it’s Dr. rer. pol. but it has to be the specific degree and not just doctoral degree. Then another thing is that sometimes the name of the department is not correct. For instance, the Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy is named like that, and very often candidates write Department of Biology, Pharmacy and Chemistry, and things like that. Or sometimes they only write the institute and not the department. Yes, these are the most common things. We also have specimen title pages and candidates should look at them and use them as an example.

That’s exactly what I wanted to ask you. So the templates for the title pages is something I look for at your website of the FU university library and not on the department’s website, correct?

Exactly. That is very important because the department websites usually refer to the version that candidates submit to the department for the referees. And that is different from what they have to submit to us for publication.

And what happens if you submit a dissertation that actually does not meet the formal requirements?

Well, that is always very annoying. In many cases, we try to correct the mistakes, which means we have to do some corrections, some new printings or something like that to glue the title page over or something like that. But sometimes it can also happen that we cannot accept the copies and that new copies have to be made. Let’s say in the case of online dissertations, the damage is usually not so high, because if the candidates have not printed copies beforehand, which they should not do, as I’ve already pointed out, but if they do it online, then they have to upload the thesis before, and then there’s still time for us to tell them, this has to be changed, you can change the PDF file. And so this can be corrected in time. But in other cases, sometimes we already get the copies and then, yeah, in the worst case, the candidate has to have them made once more.

Let’s imagine someone listening is now unsure about some specific aspects of their own publication. For example, maybe someone asks themselves, which doctorate do I actually make and they’re not sure. Who would they go to, where would they seek out help? Would that be you and your team or would that be the department?

That will be the department, the examination office.

And with what kind of questions are doctoral candidates welcome to contact the dissertations department?

In general, we only come into play after the defense. Questions that are submitted to the department. They can only be answered by the examination office. This is sometimes a misunderstanding, actually, only what happens after the defense. And whenever there are questions that we cannot answer, then we will tell them where to turn, and usually it’s the examination office if we cannot answer a question.

You already mentioned the dissertations department website. Can you explain us a little bit more about such a central resource and how candidates can find relevant information there efficiently?

Publication of a dissertation or the submission of a dissertation is very complex and it cannot be explained in a few words. And also the regulations, the Promotionsordnungen, they cannot handle all the details. So that’s why it’s important to look at our websites. Actually, it’s not only one page, it has several subordinate menu points. And it is important because in this way mistakes can be avoided.

Yeah, and that’s definitely something we all want, to avoid as many mistakes as possible because it can be a real hassle, I guess, for everyone involved if there will be delays due to mistakes.

Exactly.

Is there an important aspect related to publishing the dissertation that we haven’t touched on yet but that you think doctoral candidates should definitely be aware of?

There are always a lot of things to be said. The most important thing is really to look at our websites and to think about that before the publication in whichever way is started. And for electronic dissertations, maybe it’s important to know that if the candidate uploads their thesis on RefuBund, it is not yet published. Some candidates might think that, oh, everything must be okay and before I upload it, no, we will check it in any case, it is in our internal workflow area. We check it. We write, in any case, we write back to the candidate if something has to be changed or if everything is okay. And then we tell them if everything is okay to submit the printed copies. This is maybe something that has to be known and there are a lot of specific things and all the forms of publication.

Indira Chue, thank you so much for this interview. I truly hope that as many doctoral candidates as possible listen to this interview early on in their doctoral journey in order to avoid mistakes later on. Thank you so much.

You’re welcome. It was a pleasure.

That was Indira Chue from the Dissertations Department of the University Library at Freie Universität Berlin. Our conversation shows how central the publication step is within the doctoral process and how much time, planning and attention to detail it actually requires. It also makes clear how important it is to consult the relevant resources early and to clarify formal requirements before starting the publication process. My name is Dr. Marlies Klamt and this was an episode of the DRS Podcast, the podcast of the Dahlem Research School at Freie Universität Berlin.

You can find more episodes of the DRS Podcast on topics related to doctoral studies. This episode is part of the Finishing Your Doctorate series, which might be of particular interest to you. Thanks for tuning in and until next time.

This interview was conducted by our trainer and co-host of our podcast Dr. Marlies Klamt.