The Quality Plan of the Doctoral Programmes was a methodological proposal offered to the different programmes of the University of Valencia in order to facilitate the preparation of assessment processes with the objective of improving the quality of teaching, resulting in the development of an assessment guide. The main purpose of this guide was to provide information, basic guidelines and the basic techniques needed for the members of the Assessment Committees who were carrying out the assessment processes.
The Assessment Plan went through different stages, starting with its design in the academic year 2004-2005, in which was developed and facilitated an assessment guide based on the criteria established by the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA) in the Institutional Assessment Programme (PEI).
With this plan it was aimed that the requirement of having assessment and improvement mechanisms, required in the doctoral studies with Quality Award, it was not only a bureaucratic process, but that this one become a process of continuous improvement of these programmes and thus adapting them to the fundamental aspects of the European Higher Education Area. This process also helps to doctoral programmes with quality award in facilitating the work for the Committees in the preparation of the documentation of the process, including in the guide all the evidences required in this programme. The Quality Award is an acknowledgment to the scientific and technical teaching reliability of the doctoral programmes, as well as of the groups or departments that developed them. In the different editions all doctoral programmes, even those without the aforementioned award, were invited to enter into the improvement processes, which prepared them, among other things, for obtaining the Quality Award or for other accreditation processes that may appear in the future.