At least two pre-examiners and at least one opponent shall be appointed for each doctoral thesis. The pre-examiners and the opponent(s) should fulfill the following criteria:

• The pre-examiners and the opponent(s) must hold a doctoral degree or be professors
• The pre-examiners and the opponent(s) must be from outside the University of Oulu
• The pre-examiners and the opponent(s) must not be co-authors with the candidate in any articles included in the thesis or in other publications within the last five years
• A docent of the University of Oulu may be appointed as the pre-examiner or the opponent, if the above conditions are met and if he/she is working full-time outside the University of Oulu
• The pre-examiners and the opponent(s) cannot be the supervisors of the thesis

In addition, in the nomination process of the pre-examiners and the opponent(s) the following has to be taken account:

• The pre-eximiner and the opponent(s) should not be the persons, who have close collaboration with the supervisor(s). Possible collaboration has to be mentioned when the supervisor proposes the pre-eximiner and the opponent(s).
• The chair person of the follow-up group have to approve the proposal for the pre-examiners. If the doctoral student does not have the follow-up group, to find the readiness of the thesis will require the approval of one of the following persons in this order 

1) the responsible person of the major (doctoral training)

2) the responsible person of the major (Master's degree)

3) research dean

The chairperson of the doctoral training committee nominates the pre-reviewers. The purpose of the pre-examination procedure is to ensure, before the thesis defense permission is granted, that the thesis manuscript meets the scientific and formal requirements set for it. In addition, the pre-examination procedure is the stage at which the reviewers can impact on the quality of the thesis, usually improving it. They also have the possibility to propose that the permission to defend the thesis not be granted. For this reason, the pre-examination should be conducted very carefully. The candidate should be asked to make any necessary corrections before permission to defend the thesis is recommended.

It is recommended that the opponent is not one of the pre-examiners. If there are two opponents, one of them may also be a pre-examiner. If the only opponent is one of the pre-examiners, the proposal must be clearly justified. The pre-examiners give written statements recommending that the permission to defend the thesis should be granted, or not, within the agreed time limit (at most two months after the manuscript has been sent to them).