The article deals with the problem of PhD student training. The Salzburg Principles about the improvement and quality assurance of doctoral programs at universities in every country from European University Association are analysed and materials of LERU on quality culture in Doctoral Education in Europe are used. The three focuses of the research component of doctoral program are proposed. The first focus relates to reproducible research principle. The second focus is related to the use of multivariae models of phenomena’s study and SEM methodology. The SEM methodology is mostly based on deductive logic, involves the preliminary construction of a structural model of the relationships between the variables in order to further check for consistency with the experimental data. The third focus combines qualitative and quantitative methods and the use of triangulation (data triangulation, investigation triangulation, theory triangulation etc.). The content of selected courses for doctorate students is proposed: Reproducible Research and Multivariate Methods in Scientific Research courses. The importance of courses related to the future career is demonstrated, in particular the career of academic researcher. Further development of our work is the creation of teaching and methodological support for selected course “Twitter for professional development of PhD students”.