A monograph consists of a previously unpublished continuous text. They thus comprehensively present the doctoral thesis in German or English in a single complete work.

A cumulative dissertation is deemed to exist if the individual publications are closely related to each other and meet the requirements of a monograph in their entirety. The close subject-related connection must be specifically presented in the dissertation and should also result from the dissertation topic. The publications are to be combined into one work, substantiated with an introduction, transitional texts between the contributions as well as a classification of the research question in a larger context. In addition to the requirements, an empirically based cumulative dissertation or the empirical parts of a cumulative dissertation must contain a methods section as well as a detailed presentation of the underlying data material.

In its entirety, a cumulative dissertation is subject to the same requirements of independence, originality and quality as a monograph. A purely additive compilation of publications does not meet these requirements.

At least three German- and/or English-language publication manuscripts in sole or first authorship are required. They should be accepted articles in recognised peer-reviewed scientific journals.

If one or more of the publications mentioned in the previous section were not authored solely by the doctoral candidate, the individual scientific achievement must be presented in an appropriate form. This statement must be made in such a way that it can be understood which other authors contributed to it, which person edited which part of the publication and which person submitted which part, if any, for evaluation as a scientific achievement elsewhere.