Thesis

In principle, a cumulative thesis is possible at the Faculty of Social Sciences, provided that it is equivalent to a monographic thesis in terms of quality. A cumulative thesis consists of an introduction, at least three essays and a final discussion. The following conditions must be met:

1. Essays

(1) The cumulative thesis includes the submission of at least three thematically independent, single-authored essays by the doctoral candidate, which have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals or verifiably submitted for peer review. The essays must be closely related to the fields of Sociology, Political Science or Didactics of Social Sciences and linked by an overarching question that is reflected in the topic of the thesis.

(2) At least two of the essays must have been accepted for publication in peer-reviewed academic journals listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) at the time of submitting the thesis. For essays that have not yet been published in print or online at the time of submitting the thesis, the corresponding confirmation of acceptance from the respective journal must be presented.

In addition to these two publications in SSCI-listed journals, at least one further essay can also have been submitted for review to a journal not listed in the SSCI. 

(3)At least one of the essays must be single-authored. For co-authored essays, one of the minimum number of three single-authored essays required can be substituted in each case by two equivalent essays according to the rules in (1) and (2), to which the doctoral candidate has made a significant contribution as co-author. Co-authors of publications submitted for the cumulative thesis may not act as reviewers of that thesis. The further rules from (1) and (2) apply accordingly.

In the case of co-authored publications, the doctoral candidate must also describe in writing their respective personal contribution in terms of content and scale.

2. Introduction and final discussion

In addition to the essays, the cumulative thesis includes an introduction and a final discussion. In the introduction, the doctoral candidate presents the relationship between the submitted essays in terms of content within the framework of an overarching question and makes clear which aspects of the overarching question are covered by the individual manuscripts.

The final discussion is intended to bring together the individual results of the essays. The doctoral candidate must show what the essays contribute to answering the thesis question and embed the work in a larger scientific context. This part should also include the theoretical or methodological reflection of the doctoral candidate’s own academic approach as well as a synoptic presentation and evaluation of the results in terms of content.

To ensure a substantive discussion and presentation of the results of the research, the introduction and final discussion must have a total length of at least 90,000 characters (including spaces).

© Tobias Koch, Goethe Universität Frankfurt