A student enrolled in a doctoral degree programme (PhD, DPhil, EdD, EngD, MD, etc.) who is undertaking original research toward a thesis or equivalent capstone, under the supervision of one or more academic supervisors.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 30 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A second-year PhD student at a UK Russell Group university, three years into a four-year stipend

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A master's student doing a research dissertation is a master's-level researcher, not a doctoral candidate

Editorial commentary

A doctoral candidate is a person pursuing a doctorate, from initial registration through to the final viva or defense. ‘Doctoral student’ and ‘doctoral researcher’ are common synonyms with subtly different implications (the latter framing the doctorate as a research role rather than a programme of study), and some funders further distinguish pre-candidacy from post-candidacy students.

References

Salzburg Principles on Doctoral Education (EUA 2005, updated 2010)
UK QAA Doctoral Degree Characteristics Statement (2020)

Also known as

PhD candidate · Doctoral student · Doctoral researcher

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Doctoral candidate"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/doctoral-candidate" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/doctoral-candidate",
  "name": "Doctoral candidate",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/doctoral-candidate",
  "description": "A student enrolled in a doctoral degree programme (PhD, DPhil, EdD, EngD, MD, etc.) who is undertaking original research toward a thesis or equivalent capstone, under the supervision of one or more academic supervisors.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/mentorship-career-stages#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/doctoral-candidate",
  "sameAs": [
    "PhD candidate",
    "Doctoral student",
    "Doctoral researcher"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-30T05:48:44",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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