The academic appointed by an institution to guide a doctoral candidate's research, with formal responsibility for the academic quality of supervision, progress monitoring, ethical conduct of the research, and recommendation for examination, in accordance with the institution's doctoral regulations.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
The primary supervisor named on a UK PhD student's registration, accountable to the graduate school for supervision quality

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A research advisor who has no formal institutional appointment is a mentor, not a supervisor in this sense

Editorial commentary

Distinct from a mentor in carrying formal institutional accountability and evaluative authority. Many doctoral structures use multiple supervisors (primary + secondary, or supervisory team) to spread expertise and reduce dependency on a single person. The relationship has both intellectual and pastoral dimensions.

References

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

Also known as

Doctoral supervisor · PhD supervisor · Advisor (doctoral)

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Supervisor (doctoral)"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/supervisor-doctoral" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/supervisor-doctoral",
  "name": "Supervisor (doctoral)",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/supervisor-doctoral",
  "description": "The academic appointed by an institution to guide a doctoral candidate's research, with formal responsibility for the academic quality of supervision, progress monitoring, ethical conduct of the research, and recommendation for examination, in accordance with the institution's doctoral regulations.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/mentorship-career-stages#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/supervisor-doctoral",
  "sameAs": [
    "Doctoral supervisor",
    "PhD supervisor",
    "Advisor (doctoral)"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:02:23",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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