Doctoral & Master of Philosophy examination

Suggested form of initial email to be sent to potential examiners of a thesis by publication

I am contacting you to enquire whether you would be prepared to act as an examiner for the [doctoral / Master of Philosophy] thesis examination of one of my candidates, [name]. His/her studies... [one to two sentence encapsulation]. A summary of this work is attached .

I anticipate that the candidate will submit within six to eight weeks time.

I would be very grateful if you could please advise by email whether you would be prepared to act as an examiner. The examination itself would require you to forward your recommendation to the university's Research Graduate School Committee on a pro-forma sheet, together with a supporting statement in which you could provide general and specific comments concerning the thesis.

The thesis contains papers that have been published and/or accepted/ submitted for publication. This is a recent innovation of Monash University that allows submission of a thesis based on published or unpublished papers, which together demonstrate a sustajned theme on …... A link to the summary of specifications for theses by publication is included in the Notes for Examiners that accompany the thesis copy.

The Research Graduate School Committee normally asks that examiners return their completed report within eight weeks of the receipt of the thesis. However, if you would require more time, could you please give me an estimate of the time needed. In addition I would need to know if you had any pre-conditions for examination of the thesis.

As I must indicate to the university whether you have examined doctoral theses previously, I would be grateful for a general statement of your experience. This could be of the form “I have examined over 20 PhD theses for universities in Europe and North America in the past 15 years”.

Please note that your identity will be revealed to the candidate once the thesis is dispatched for examination.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.