Thesis amendments after your examination

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The following information is for HDR students who have received their external examiners' reports and grades. Students with A/B/C grades are required to make amendments to their thesis based on the examiners’ comments.

Additional detailed information about the HDR examination process can be found in the HDR examination procedures.

Amending your thesis

The majority of students will have some amendments to make to their thesis based on examiners’ comments. The majority of these amendments will need to be approved through an internal process at Flinders before your degree can be completed. The Office of Graduate Research will guide you through this process so please continue to monitor your Flinders email account.

Students will be asked to use the Thesis Amendments table to address the examiners comments and the attachment/link in this line needs to be updated with the new document attached, and the text also changed from minor/major amendments to Thesis Amendments Table.

Thesis amendments are due within 3 months of receiving your examiners' reports and must be uploaded into Inspire. The approval of your amendments will be managed in Inspire and you will be notified when your amendments have been approved.

Below are suggestions for how to manage the thesis amendment process

Take the emotion out

Read your examiners' reports, take a breath and don’t take the examiners’ suggestions personally. Take the emotion out of the reports - you are not your thesis. The examiners’ recommendations are intended to improve your thesis and future work. Remember your thesis will be available via open access through the Flinders University Library so you will want to improve it based on the examiners' comments. Take time to speak with your supervisor(s) about the reports and required amendments.

Don’t leave it

Don’t leave it too long to make changes to your thesis. You have worked hard to make it this far; it is time for the final push to finish the thesis and obtain your degree.

Make the easy changes first

Make the easy changes to your thesis first, such as typos and grammar. This will help start the process and help you gather momentum.

Track the changes

Make sure you track all the changes to your thesis and update the Thesis Amendments Table as you work through your changes. This will need to be provided as part of the approval process and documentation uploaded to Inspire.

Be professional

Be grateful, respectful and professional in your response to examiners' comments. Negative comments towards examiners will not be accepted. The examiners were chosen as experts in your field of research.

Address ALL examiners’ comments

You must address ALL of the comments from both examiners.

If you disagree with an examiner’s comments then you must provide a professional, logical and respectful academic argument as to why you disagree. Use the current literature to confirm your argument.

If only one examiner identifies a problem the fact that the other does not, does not invalidate that examiner. Respond to all issues separately.

If an examiner is commenting on a part of your thesis which has already been published, you will still be required to update your thesis. The fact that work was previously published is not an acceptable academic argument to ignore examiners’ recommendations.

Add additional clarity and discussion to your thesis

Examiners' comments must be respected. If you believe an examiner has mis-read or missed a point in your thesis, consider that you may not have communicated this sufficiently in your thesis. Improve the ‘signposting’ in your thesis and add more commentary and clarity based on the examiners’ recommendations.

If an examiner asks for more information in your thesis that was not part of the scope of the research, amend your thesis and introduction to more obviously state what the thesis will and will not include.

If comments of Examiner 1 and Examiner 2 contradict each other explain why this divergence could have occurred. Choose a recommendation that will improve your thesis and provide an academic argument to the other examiner about why you have not acted on their recommendations. Consider making your arguments more overtly in your thesis and adding a discussion demonstrating the various differences of thought in your discipline.