Objective　To estimate the incentive and guidance of degree policy for the doctoral student's capacity-building. Methods　Totally 1185 published SCI papers completed by 1 013 doc-toral students from 2008 to 2012 in Capital Medical University were filed and impact factors of these SCI journals taken as analysis objects were organized using Microsoft Office Excel software. ANOVA was used for data procession and t-test was used for statistical analysis. P<0.05 signifies statistically significant difference. Results　This study showed that 97% doctoral students can complete SCI paper publication in compliance with requirements of doctoral degree policy. Quality of SCI papers of aca-demic degree PhDs was higher than that of professional degree PhDs（P=0.00）. Level of SCI papers of PhDs in basic disciplines was higher than that of PhDs in clinical disciplines（P=0.00）. In addition， this study found that higher leveled SCI papers originated primarily from the national key disciplines and co-first authors. Conclusions　The appropriate degree policies play an important guiding role in enhancing the quality of doctoral students' education. Degree-granting units should make more specific guidance policies according to different types of disciplines and cultures， such as raising published arti-cle requirements to the clinical professional PhDs， improving and standardizing relevant degree poli-cies about SCI papers published by co-first authors， strengthening disciplinary conditions building， etc.