International doctorate
Royal Decree 99/2011, of 28 January, which regulates official doctoral studies, as amended by Royal Decree 576/2023, establishes that the "International Doctorate" mention may be included on the front of the doctoral degree.
To obtain this mention, the following REQUIREMENTS established in this Royal Decree and in the Regulation of Doctoral Studies of the University of Valladolid doctoral thesis must be met:
1. To carry out research stay(s) outside Spain, during the training period, of at least three months' duration:
-Royal Decree 99/2011 (which affects students who enrolled in their doctoral studies BEFORE 19th July 2023): the stay may be carried out in two periods, at a single higher education institution or research centre of recognised prestige and, as a general rule, different to the one from which they came.
-Royal Decree 576/2023 which modifies Royal Decree 99/2011 (which affects students who enrolled in their doctoral studies AFTER 19th July 2023): one or several stays are allowed, but at least one of them must be of at least one month. They may be carried out at one or more prestigious higher education institutions or research centres and, in general, different to those from which they came.
In both cases, the following conditions apply:
A. The purpose of the stay may be to complement and reinforce the student’s research training, studying or carrying out research work.
B. The stay and the activities must be endorsed by the thesis supervisor and authorised by the Academic Committee of the doctoral programme.
C. Once completed, the stay and its activities must be recorded in the student's activities document, by means of a certificate signed by the person responsible for the stay(s) at the host institution(s).
2. Part of the doctoral thesis (at least the summary and conclusions) must be written and defended in one of the usual languages used for scientific communication in their field of study, other than any of the official languages of Spain. Doctoral programmes may require other parts of the thesis, or the whole thesis, to be written in said language. If the stay has taken place in a Spanish-speaking country, this rule does not apply.
3. A report on the thesis must be issued by at least two external experts who hold a PhD and who do not belong to Spanish higher education institutions or research centres. These experts must be people other than the researcher responsible for the doctoral student's stays or the person responsible for tutoring or supervision tasks at the host institution.
4. There must be at least one expert from a non-Spanish higher education institution on the thesis examination board, other than the person responsible for the stay at the foreign institution.
Certificate template (bilingual) for a research stay at a foreign institution.
More information in the section on doctoral studies regulation:
https://esduva.uva.es/la-escuela/normativa/normativa-de-los-estudios-de-doctorado/