PhD contract

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The contractual period may be extended to four years if obligatory duties as a university research fellow are part of the financing plan. Double-competence candidates who follow a specialist programme combined with doctoral training are admitted for six years. All applicants who are admitted must sign an admission agreement.

Contract concerning financial gains from research results
PhD candidates who are employed by the University of Bergen and PhD candidates admitted on a quota scholarship must sign a contract with the University of Bergen concerning rights to any financial gains resulting from the research results produced during work at the University of Bergen. The contract must be signed in connection with the appointment as a research fellow or, for quota scholarship holders, on admission to doctoral training.

Intellectual property rights (IPR) and confidentiality
There must be no restrictions on the publication of a doctoral thesis. An exception may be made in the event that a prior agreement has been made concerning deferred publication on an agreed date. Such agreement may be made when the doctoral work is partially or wholly funded by an external party in order for the external party to decide its interest in possible patents or commercialisation of research results. An external party may not require all or part of a doctoral thesis to be withheld from publication or in any way hinder its being made publicly available. For research projects initiated by or carried out in collaboration with an external partner of UiB, for instance an industry partner or a research institute, a separate agreement must be signed to clarify title to IPR brought into the project and IPR developed in the project. In some cases, it is also necessary to keep research results confidential and refrain from publishing until after the necessary patent applications have been filed.