Last year, several universities, ITMO University included, were given the right to award academic degrees and form thesis boards with powers of their own. Thus, defenses at ITMO University will be different from those at thesis boards of the State Supreme Certification Commission of the Russian Federation. First of all, the procedure will become more modern from the technical standpoint: it will feature e-voting, and both members of the board and opponents will be able to operate remotely. The level of thesis defenses will also improve due to the participation of international experts. The requirements to presenting theses have also changed. For one, the scientific results now have to be put to test at conferences, which wasn't among the Supreme Certification Commission's requirements. The number of thesis boards members has also become fewer: while the Supreme Certification Commission's boards included up to 20 members, ITMO University invites nine experts for awarding a Candidate of Sciences degree and 11 for awarding a Doctor of Science degree.
Still, the requirements to thesis board members have become stricter. The essential selection criteria here is the candidate’s scientific results for the past five years. They have to have no less than five publications in the Supreme Certification Commission's journals in the subject areas which the board represents, and no less than three publications in scientific journals that are indexed by international databases. The candidates also have to have participated in at least three international conferences, and be Doctors of Engineering (save for the academic secretary who can be a Candidate of Sciences).
The first step in creating an ITMO thesis board is defining the list of subject areas it represents (up to three for a board), as well as its permanent members: Chair, Vice Chair, and academic secretary. Then, the thesis board organizers decide on the list of candidates to fill in the position of thesis board members, from both the university staff and the invited experts, international experts included. This pool of specialists is constantly growing. Thus, each thesis board consists of a permanent part (the executive board) and experts from the list of candidates depending on the defense topic. The permanent part of the board is selected for a term of at least a year.
Today, it is only possible to defend a thesis at either the Supreme Certification Commission's thesis board or at the new thesis boards of particular educational institutions. The Supreme Certification Commission's thesis boards in the subject areas in which the new thesis boards are yet to be opened will operate only till September 1, 2019.
Yuri Matveev, Doctor of Engineering, Chair of ITMO's thesis board, Speech Technology Center
For the board's members, we've selected professionals, i.e. people who really know the field in question and can assess the candidate's qualification and contribution to science. When creating the board, we adhered to several rules. For one, there's a requirement that part of the board's members (no less than three) have to represent external scientific organizations. At our first "home" thesis defense, such people, myself included, constituted over a half of all members.
I see a lot of benefits in the new system. Nowadays, I often interact with Western universities, as many of our PhD students study on joint international programs, and we want to use efficient European practices here as well. In the West, the academic degree system has a lot in common with ours: their boards consists of specialists who have a keen knowledge of the field in question. Our old system featured people from different subject fields, therefore some of the boards' members weren't knowledgeable enough to give judgements on specific thesis topics. The new format ensures that all members are specialists who understand the thesis topic really well.
Being a member of a thesis board myself, I can say that the defense process hasn’t become any easier. After the first defense, it became evident that the questions asked set the candidates thinking. As the defense results are published openly, anyone can send a review and their opinion, and these will also be accounted for. Another important novelty is that some of the board's members can participate remotely. During the second defense at ITMO University, the opponent from Finland used Skype to communicate with us.
Sergei Kuleshov, Doctor of Engineering, board member, St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences
The commonly accepted practice of having the Supreme Certification Commission as a controlling body is familiar and understandable, and we are yet to tell what the new initiative will lead to. I already get the feeling that there's a sort of a competition between the traditional thesis boards and the new ones. Some candidates prefer to have their defense the traditional way, others choose the new system. However, the very idea of launching a new format of thesis boards is quite interesting, and I see no problems in implementing it. On the whole, it is the members of the old thesis boards that become members of new ones. In ITMO's thesis board that I became part of, many participants are also members of traditional ones.
Andrei Oleinik, candidate (thesis topic "Methods and algorithms for mutual reconstruction of facial and voice data")
I made the decision to have my defense with ITMO University's thesis board, as all of its members are specialists in my work's subject field. What's more, I've always chosen an unbeaten path during my educational career. My Bachelor's and Master's programs were only being introduced for the first time when I applied for them. The PhD program I followed also operated under new standards, so I decided to go along with this tradition. As for my defense, I'd say that on one side, the procedure became simpler, but on the other, due to it being a new thesis board and a new format, there was much uncertainty. Still, despite the novelty of the procedure, everything went well for me.
I knew some of the board's members, but not all of them. I looked up information about every member in advance and checked what they specialize in. So, during the defense, I understood why they asked me particular questions.
Georgy Kukharev, Doctor of Engineering, Andrei Oleinik's research advisor, ITMO University
I and Andrei were the first to defend a thesis with ITMO University's thesis board. This was quite an experience; before, I was a member of many thesis boards, sometimes abroad, where I've worked for 25 years. I really liked the new format, all of the board's members were very active and gave the candidate no slack.
Andrei Priorov, official opponent, Doctor of Engineering, Yaroslavl State University
In order to speak about the new system's efficiency, we need more experience. What I can say for now is that the work I was opponent to was no worse than any of those I've been opponent to before. The new thesis boards offer a new, more automated system where there's less bureaucracy.
The right to award academic degrees was given only to the country's leading universities with the highest reputation. Whether this practice should be scaled to other universities remains a question, as the lower level of training can lead to lower requirements to thesis works. Before, this problem was solved by the Supreme Certification Commission: every thesis work was first evaluated by its expert councils that included about 40 experts in its scientific field. It is very important for a thesis work to meet particular requirements. Now, if we were to introduce new thesis boards in absence of such a regulating body, there is a risk that particular universities will set lower requirements.
Much as in other fields, we've been witnessing a growing level of bureaucracy in the field of science in the past 10-20 years, while it was a higher level of thesis works that we should have aimed for. The increase in the organizational complexity of the procedures and formal requirements led to more PhD students giving up on science and pursuing a career in the industry, and this is what we have to deal with.
Galina Lavrentyeva, candidate with a thesis topic "Methods and software systems for detecting attacks on voice biometric systems"
I decided to have my defense with the new thesis board, as we didn't have a thesis board for my research field at ITMO University before. When I learned that my alma mater opens one, the choice became obvious. Also, I really liked that they used the English way of mentioning the candidate's degree in the diploma, i.e. not “Candidate of Science” but the internationally accepted “PhD”.
Of course, I was a bit troubled by the fact that the board was totally new and there were no defenses with it before, as it is always easier when you can consider the experiences of your colleagues. Still, being a pioneer in something is always a pleasing mission.
Milos Zelezny, PhD, official opponent, the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen
I don't know much about Russia's traditional thesis defense system; at our university, the procedure has much in common with the format accepted at ITMO University. I think there are benefits to both systems. For instance, smaller boards make it possible to gather more experts in the work's research field. Also, it must be very hard to organize a session for 20-25 members. At our university, we also have small thesis boards (seven members and opponents) for each particular candidate. What's more, the opponents can also be part of the board. We also have a similar rule for three of the board's members being representatives of other universities.
