ISP: Frequently asked questions

According to the Higher Education Ordinance every doctoral student should have an Individual Study Plan (ISP)

ISP is an agreement about planned research and educational activities and timelines between the doctoral student and their supervisors.

The KI Committee of Doctoral Education has decided to use a digital ISP to make the administrative process and follow-up of doctoral education more efficient.

All fields and obligatory attachments are required for the ISP to be approved.

Your ISP is only valid when it has the status Established - approved in the ISP-system by the doctoral student, the main supervisor and by the study director at your department.

Your principal supervisor needs to create a new digital ISP in the ISP-system.

• You should always create a current study plan in the ISP-system.
• Some information will be uploaded automatically from Ladok, for example most of the basic information (section 1-2) and completed courses (section 4).
• In the ISP-system you describe both completed work (e.g. educational activities, doctoral project, degree outcomes), as well as planned work that you still intend to conduct.

No, you do not need to print and archive your ISP because archiving of all study plans occurs directly in the ISP-system.

The departmental Study Administrator will give them access to the ISP-system if the doctoral student has been registered in Ladok and has an activated KI-ID. More information

The ISP must be written in agreement with all co-supervisors. The principal supervisor has to fill in the details about all co-supervisors, their contribution and responsibilities in the ISP section 5. Supervisors and responsibilities.

Co-supervisor:

• can only view a non-editable PDF version of the created ISP
• can't make any changes in the ISP

If you have more than one role in the system, you will automatically be logged in with the higher level of authorisation, i.e. you will be logged in as a Study Director.

You can change role by clicking Change permission in the Menu.

It's possible that you have recently changed your Swedish personal number from a temporary number to a permanent number. In that case, please ask your HR staff at your department to update in the staff system so that you can access all KI systems. 

Go to Study plans - Create study plan.

You might need to Change permission in order to make sure that your role is selected as a Supervisor (if you have a few roles).

Then you will see the Create study plan button. Watch ISP film

1. Check if the name is spelled correctly. For example, you might need to search for Anna Maria for someone usually called Maria. You can easily check the correct name at ki.se using the ‘Search’ function. Watch ISP film
2. You might also need to check if the doctoral student has been registered in Ladok and has an activated KI username (for newly admitted students). In that case, talk to your departmental doctoral education administrator.

Doctoral student and principal supervisors must approve each others edits in the ISP-system in order to able to send the ISP forward to the Study Director.

Once the doctoral student has approved the plan the Approve button will be accessible for the principal supervisor.

The following sections can only be edited by your main supervisor:

• Section 1. Research school, if applicable
• Section 2. Time plan and financial support
• Section 3. Obligatory courses
• Section 4. Supervisor team and responsibilities

Most likely, you have recently changed from a temporary personal id number to a new permanent one or there is some information missing about you in the KI staff system. Please contact your HR person at your department. 

The ISP-system is designed so that both the progression of the doctoral student as well as any changes or additions should be documented at the annual follow-up or half-time review.

All fields in which changes have been made in a revised ISP are marked with a blue line.

You will also get a notification about the changes when you login to the ISP-system.

In order to see the updated information from Ladok in the ISP, doctoral student or principal supervisor need to go into Edit mode.

For example, when it is time for the annual revision, the principal supervisor creates a new version of the ISP.

The ISP will thereby get updated with the latest registrations from Ladok.

After establishment, the ISP is locked and only available as a PDF.

Only your principal supervisor can create a new version of the ISP in order to follow-up and update the ISP.

Once your principal supervisor has clicked the Revise and then Save and close buttons you will be able to review and edit the ISP content. More information

Contact ISP-support for a change of principal supervisor.

If a study plan already established it can be assigned to a new principal supervisor.

Once the new principal supervisor has created a revised version of the study plan, this person will thereafter be included in the study plan as the principal supervisor.

Principal supervisor can change co-supervisors directly in the ISP-system when a revision is made of the study plan.

More information

A new ISP needs to be created when the formal admission to the new department and change in departmental responsibility in Ladok has been finalised.

When this is done, a new ISP can be created in the ISP-system.

It is not possible to continue working on an existing ISP when changing department/subject.

More information

Upon admission to a doctoral degree, latter part (i.e. for those who had previously been admitted for a licentiate degree), a new ISP must be created for the new admission, as the ISP-system does not handle multiple admissions in the same ISP.

In the event that, for whatever reason, the doctoral student or principal supervisor don’t approve an ISP, the designated establisher may force the approval process.

This is because the Ordinance states that higher education institutions are obliged to establish an ISP for each doctoral student.

The e-mail notifications are automatically generated every time a user decides on approval/non-approval during the decision process steps when creating the ISP.

The automatic e-mail notification is sent to the person with the next role in the process, with a reminder to make a decision (approve, or disapprove and send back to the previous role for revision and new approval).

If there is no action taken an automatic e-mail will be sent out weekly reminding the person to judge the revised study plan.

In the normal process, an automatic e-mail notification is sent to the doctoral student, a principal supervisor, co-supervisors and the Study Administrator once the Study Director has approved the ISP.

See the ISP workflow

11 months after establishing the ISP an automatic e-mail notification is sent to the doctoral student and to the principal supervisor with a reminder to revise the ISP.

If the ISP has not been updated within two months after the reminder, an automatic e-mail notification is sent to the Head of Department with a reminder about the revision.

More information

The e-mail reminders will no longer be sent out if the doctoral student has begun permanent leave, or when the final degree has been completed, issued and documented in Ladok.

Every time a user takes an action in the ISP (revision, reading and agreement of content) this should be documented in the message log, so that the next user in line understands what has been done by the previous user.

It is recommended to use Firefox or Google Chrome as web browser.

If you experience technical issues while using the ISP-system with one web browser, try the alternative web browser.

You can select the language after logging in (see flag symbol).

The ISP system choses the default language that you have chosen for the web browser. Watch ISP film

The internal login is for all those persons employed/affiliated at KI.

The external login is for co-supervisors belonging to other universities.