This paper uses two high-profile cases of alleged plagiarism in doctoral theses to discuss the debate on academic malpractice in the German context. The two cases received intense media attention which led to a hitherto unseen interrogation of academic standards in higher education and of the integrity of the research community. The paper analyses…

The introduction of structured doctoral programs (SDPs) is changing the conditions of doctoral training in Europe and worldwide. SDPs were introduced to reorganize doctoral training to make it more transparent and to improve the quality of doctoral training and supervision. This article suggests a conceptual framework to assess the outcome of…