Here you can find our guide to the final hurdles of doctoral study… examination procedures around the world can vary, but there are some features held in common. Our guide contains reflections from those who have been through the process, tips on preparing and staying calm on the day, considerations around the use of AI, and ideas about making doctoral examination more open and accessible.
Most of the guide is practical. It covers:
- what examiners are actually assessing, and how they prepare and reach a recommendation
- the main oral formats: the UK-style viva, the North American committee defence and the continental public defence
- how examiners are chosen, with tips for candidates who get a say
- a countdown from three months out to the moment you walk into the room
- whether to have a mock viva, who to ask and how to run it
- the questions examiners commonly ask, and how to handle the ones you didn’t expect
- the possible outcomes, what happens behind the scenes afterwards, and how to approach corrections
- the emotional aftermath, including the post-PhD blues that few people warn you about
It ends with a preparation checklist and a reading list of further resources.
There are two themes in this guide that you won’t find in most similar handbooks.
The first is openness. For most of its history, doctoral examination happened behind closed doors and theses sat in single bound copies in university libraries. The guide looks at who has been let into the research community and when, and at what open educational practices could mean for examination: published criteria, open theses, blogging your thinking as you go, and the more radical idea of publishing examiner reports or streaming the viva. It also covers online and hybrid vivas and reasonable adjustments for accessibility.
The second is generative AI. A polished written thesis is no longer strong evidence on its own that its author understands it, which makes the oral examination more important. The guide is frank about the risks of preparing with AI (sycophancy, confident errors, a false sense of fluency) and offers ten concrete ways to use it well, from asking it to play a sceptical methodologist to rehearsing the moment you don’t know an answer.
You can read the Guide below or download a copy.
Suggested citation: Farrow, R. (ed.), Atenas, J., Bali, M., Bozkurt, A., Dawadi, S., Havemann, L., Iniesto, F., Johnston, S., Lesko, I., Nerantzi, C., Pete, J., Pitt, B., Stanislaus, A. & Weller, M. (2026). The GO-GN Guide to Doctoral Examination. Global Open Graduate Network / Open Education Research Hub. https://go-gn.net/gogn_outputs/the-go-gn-guide-to-doctoral-examination
