One of the most important tasks for a university is to inform the surrounding society about its current output in research and education. New doctoral theses provide a good idea of the business operations and can also have a news value of interest to the media.
This page provides information on how to formulate a good draft for a press release on your doctoral thesis. Each semester, the University offers lectures to those who are about to publicly defend a doctoral thesis. The lectures are offered in both Swedish and English. These include, for instance, information on how to write a press release on your doctoral thesis and how to publish your thesis in DiVA.
Draft
Before you defend your doctoral thesis, you should get in touch with your faculty communications officer who will ask you to submit a draft to a press release on your thesis. Submit your draft through the form on the page Press release guide – doctoral thesis after you have read the instructions on this page. The communications officer will edit your text where necessary and you will get to see and approve the changes made before publishing. Depending on the communications officer, the press release may be returned to you in Swedish. If necessary, ask your supervisor for help.
Photos
Please submit a high-resolution portrait photo of yourself and also other photos relating to your research that could be used as press photos. If you did not take the photos yourself, it is important that you ask the photographer if you may get copyrights to use the photos as a press photo. If there are other people in the photo who could be recognised, these individuals also need to give their consent.
Deadline
We need your draft no later than two weeks before the public defence of the doctoral thesis. But the sooner the better. In special circumstances, you can submit your draft later, but it should definitely be submitted before the public defence of the doctoral thesis.
News release
Press releases are usually submitted to relevant media through news service providers between one to two weeks before the public defence of the doctoral thesis. For example, local newspapers are often interested in writing about their current or past residents. Is there a local paper in your home town that may be interested in writing about your doctoral thesis? Also, are there newspapers in your home country or neighbouring countries that may be interested in the results of your doctoral thesis? Please, inform the communications officer if you can think of any.
Publication
The press release will be published on the Umeå University web page. The Swedish version of the press release is also published on Expertsvar and Mynewsdesk. A potential English version of your press release is sometimes also submitted via AlphaGalileo and EurekAlert. Reading other people's press releases is often a good way to find inspiration. Take a look at news releases on umu.se or umu.se/english.
About the public defence of the doctoral thesis
At the end of each press release, there is information about the public defence of the doctoral thesis based upon information in the calendar of events. Please also add a link to the electronically published doctoral thesis.