History, mission and activities of ORPHEUS Zdravko Lacković ORPHEUS President University of Zagreb School of Medicine Croatia The Bologna process represents the biggest common project in the reform of the educational system in the history of Europe. In this process, doctorate or PhD is seen as a third cycle of high education. However, “the third cycle of high education” does not mean that PhD is no more what it used to be in most developed countries - and that is research. In European Medicine and Health Sciences, in the past and even today, there are countries where traditionally PhD does not exist, especially considering clinical medicine. There are countries where you can find even two doctorates (former Warshaw Pact counters), one after another. There are countries where you can earn a PhD mainly by advanced learning. There are countries where you can earn a PhD only by internationally recognized results of research. Thus, when we mention a PhD in medicine today, people will have different concepts in mind in different countries, and in some countries they will probably not know what to think at all. Worst of all is that we do not have information what is going on in the neighbourhood. According to one survey only a small percentage of European universities have web pages written in a language understandable to students from other countries. Imagine US science if a young person from Denver would not be able to find and understand information about different study programmes in Los Angeles. This is how Europe looks like today. Organizing European conferences This need for better understanding, for better-defined PhD programmes and homogenous criteria in many European countries, as well as the willingness in many countries to break up with the tradition of a small autarkic scientific community, lead to the First European Conference on Harmonisation of PhD Programmes in Biomedicine and Health Sciences held at the University of Zagreb – Medical School, where we tried to find out whether the consensus is possible to achieve. Participants coming from 25 universities and from 16 European countries adopted unanimously Declaration of European conference on harmonisation of PhD programmes in biomedicine and health sciences (‘Zagreb declaration’). This was basically the first international agreement on what a research doctorate is, what a PhD programme should include, etc. We are proud to say that this conference was held before the Bologna seminar in Salzburg, where the well-known ten principles on PhD programmes were adopted. It is not surprising that the academic community in one field and a wider community of European universities shared the same ideas. Since it was issued in 2004 until today, ‘Zagreb declaration ’has been supported by representatives of more than 50 European medical schools. Certain conclusions of the ‘Zagreb declaration ’appear self-explanatory, however, at many universities in scientifically less developed European countries they might appear almost “revolutionary”. For the first time there was an international agreement on what the PhD and PhD programmes in medicine are. It should not be the beginning of scientific work, neither its “crown”. It should be the proof of capability “to carry out independent, original and scientifically significant research” and capability to “critically evaluate work done by others”. On the international level it was said for the first time that for the procedure of dissertation assessment the same criteria pertain as for the peer review of any scientific paper, project,