Students’ Perceptions of Doctoral Defense Formats
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper needs to be revised before publication. See some expressions like Error! Reference source not found, which appear several times in the paper, out of context. It may be a error of writing that needs to be corrected to give consistency to the affected text.
A restructuring of the figures presented between lines 800-842 and 884-903 would be useful and necessary, with the centralization of the data from them and the addition to each of their names (eg Fig. 6 and 9). We suggest suggesting the inclusion of data in the form of tables, in order to avoid loading the paper with to much figures, which can easily be considered to be in excess.
We propose these revisions in order to publish the paper, considering the results obtained, which may be useful to those interested in optimizing the defence doctoral process.
Author Response
Please see the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
It should be noted that the introduction provides sufficient background and includes all relevant references. The research design is very appropriate and the methods are adequately described. The results are presented clearly and extensively, which strongly supports the conclusions of the work.
Author Response
Please see the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear author,
This paper presents an interesting perspective on students`perception of doctoral defence formats and I think the paper would be a strong contribution to the field after some revision. Below I have summarized the strengths and recommendations for different sections.
The introduction and literatuure review are overall well-written however it may be helpful to add more content for making clear what research problem examined in the paper. What is missed - the aim of study and what are the research questions?
In the literature review, different defence formats are discussed in great detail. However, the role of the opponent in the defense process has not been addressed. It could also be added, as there are practices where the opponent is also a member of the defense committee, as well as practices where he is not a member of the defense committee.
Conclude this section but presenting how this review leads to the rationale and purpose for the current study.
The combination of quantitative methods with qualitative analysis of open-ended questions was appropriate to the study.
The findings and the discussion are presented in one chapter and was very well written, I liked the author's interpretations and the discussion about the findings. I would omit the figures, because all the explanatory information is in the text and they do not add anything valuable and take up a lot of leaf space.
Writing Edits – please find my comments here:
The article is written throughout the I-form, but I would recommend an impersonal approach.
Page 2 British universities showed that that the key criteria are the same, but that at the same time there are also differences in procedures and practices across universities
Page 2 Key criteria for receiving the doctoral title – you meant probably doctoral degree?
Page 3 in this study
Page 4 The timeline to graduation and award of the doctoral title – degree?
Page 8 Respond-404ents took between 2.5 minutes and 81 hours
Page 8 Error! Reference source not found.???? – please look the text, this Error is in the many places!
Error! Reference source not found.shows the socio-demographic characteristics of t he respondents of the survey, as well as the breakdown per field.
Page 10 Error! Reference source not found.shows the b478reakdown of committee composition per fiel
Page 12 Error! Reference source not found.shows that on average, students 519feel most nervous before the defense (median value 7on an
Something has happened on page 12
Page 14 Error! Reference source not found.gives an over-596view of the results.
Best wishes
Author Response
Please see the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I respect the decision of the authors to present their research and finally, the readers will be a real reviewers. The corrections made by the authors improve the paper.
