Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertation Searches
Cyberthèses. It is an electronic archive and diffusion program that stores thesis (primarily in French). Initiated in 1998 by the University of Montreal Press's and University Lumière Lyon 2 with the support of the "Fonds Francophone des Inforoutes" and Unesco, it is a collaborative network of the universities of various European, North and Latin American, African countries (France, Switzerland, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Algeria, Mali, Madagascar, Mauritius...), French speaking or not. Click here for the list.
DART-Europe E-theses Portal. It is a partnership of research libraries and library consortia who are working together to improve global access to European research theses. It is endorsed by LIBER and it is the European Working Group of the Network Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLT). Currently (May 2012) it provides access to 295,616 open access research theses from 408 Universities sourced from 20 European countries. Click here for the list of Dart-Europe Partners.
Dissertations Theses Database. It is an online catalogue elaborated by The Center for Research Libraries that is an international consortium of North American universities, colleges and independent research libraries. It was founded in 1949 to support advanced research and to teach in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Its primary goal is to preserve and to make available to scholars the primary source material critical to those disciplines. For these reasons it acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching. The database lists 800,000 doctoral dissertations from universities outside the U.S. and Canada. 100 European universities maintain exchange or deposit agreements with CRL. It is possible to see a list of the countries and associations which can be found in the CRL database by using the two pull-down menu under "Browse by Country and Awarding Institution".
DIVA Portal Developed by the ECP at the Uppsala University Library, it is a finding tool for research publications and student theses (more than 88,000) written in 30 Scandinavian universities and colleges of higher education (click here to see the list). The Academic Archive Online (Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet in Swedish) offers both publishing services and technical solutions for local repositories. The participating universities publishes and archives full text documents through DiVA. The archive contains mainly doctoral and undergraduate theses and research reports. "Advanced search" in the student theses catalogue lets the user search by university, subject/course, educational program, subject category and thesis level. Some DiVA repositories are also members of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD).
ETDs Worldwide. It is a global index of freely available electronic theses and dissertations (more than 30,000), provided by major ETD collections around the world (click here to see the complete list).The research can be activate by author, title, abstract, subject, keyword, school/publisher. It does not search the full text of the ETDs. However the user can refine his/her search by selecting the limiters on the right window of the result page (degrees, levels, universities....).
Linguist List Dissertation Abstracts. It is a database operated by the Institute for Language Information and Technology (ILIT) at Eastern Michigan University. It contains more than 2,100 theses and abstracts of doctoral dissertations, which are directly added by the authors themselves to the Linguist List database. It is possible to search by author, year, title, institution, linguistic field, or language specialty.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. It is the world's largest theses and dissertations portale, it contains more than 400,000 electronic theses and dissertations, from over 70 institutes worldwide that are currently made available via NDLTD. Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations is an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination, and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). Click here to see the list of the members.
PhdData.org.The Universal Index of Doctoral Dissertations in Progress is the product of the combined initiative and efforts of several doctoral students in the U.S.A., Argentina and Israel, who felt the need for one site that would concentrate all existing information on doctoral researches around the world. The database offers doctoral students and their instructor information on all researches in-progress, thus enabling contact between students and researchers for academic purposes (for example each bibliographic record contains a link to write to the author) and preventing duplication of work currently being conducted. It also facilitates exposure of doctoral theses to professional journals, conference organizers and various research institutions, and facilitates the interaction between the world of research and application. There are over 3,600 theses registered at the moment (May 2012).
Proquest Dissertations and Theses (PQDT) Open. It is a database which provides the full text of open access dissertations and theses. The authors of these dissertations and theses have opted to publish as open access and make their research available for free on the website ProQuest's UMI Dissertation Publishing. The world’s most comprehensive collection of dissertation and theses Proquest Dissertations and Thesis - Full text includes 2.7 million searchable citations to dissertations and theses from around the world (more than 700 leading academic institutions) from 1861 (simple bibliographic citation are also available for dissertations dating from 1637) to the present day together with 1.2 million full text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. This service is not free of charge. Dissertation Express is another chargeable service offered by ProQuest's UMI (University Microform Inc.). It allows institutions and individuals to order and receive dissertations (in PDF or hard copy formats) selected from over two million titles available from ProQuest.
Collective Theses Catalogues and Repositories
Europe
Austria
Österreichische Dissertationsdatenbank. The Austrian Dissertations Database comprises bibliographic information and abstracts of Austrian dissertations from 1990 and it contains 98,496 records (May 2012). Title, descriptors, and most of the abstracts are in both German and English. Full text is available for some of these theses.
Belgium
BICTEL/e. It is a multi-institutional repository that gather together the results of the research (theses and e-prints) of the universities of the French Community of Belgium (Bruxelles, Louvain, Liège, Namur, etc.). All the publications are freely accessible on line in full text. Created in 2000, this repository currently (May 2012) holds more than 5,000 bibliographic records and more than 2400 theses (full text in PDF format) dating from 2002 onwards.
France
Theses Fr. (Université Paris Ouest-Nanterre La Défense) is an online database which provides information on doctoral theses in French universities and higher learning institutions. More than 90 institutions are partners of the TF which annually records approximately 9,000 theses in progress (currently there are more than 100,000 records, 6,000 fulltext free access). The database is continually being updated. The central database includes files in the following subjects: Humanities and Arts, Languages and Cultural Studies, Anthropology, History, Geography, Linguistics, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Education, etc.
SUDOC (Système Universitaire de Documentation/ABES). It is a French online catalogue created by Higher Educational and Research libraries and resource centres. There are nearly 10 million bibliographic records in this catalogue describing all kinds of document (books, dissertations, reviews, electronic resources, audio-visual documents, microfiches, maps, scores, manuscripts and very old books). The user should select "type of publications" in “Advanced Search” to restrict his search.
Germany
DissOnline.de. The Dissonline.de information system is a project which was created in 2001 by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. It provides a wide range of information on the electronic publishing of dissertations and post-doctoral theses submitted to German, Austrian and Swiss Universities. It is possible to search by relevance for authors, libraries, scientific institutions and publishing houses. Furthermore, Dissonline.de allows direct access to electronic university publications held by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Great Britain
Index to Theses. A comprehensive listing of theses with abstracts accepted for higher degrees by universities in United Kingdom and Ireland since 1716. More than 570,000 theses in collection (343,680 of which have abstracts) (May 2012). Subscription is required.
Ethos - Electronic theses online service. It is an interface that harvests e-theses from Institutional repositories and digitised paper theses from participating institution (click here to see the list) to offer the single point of access. Many of these institution support Open Access to their theses, so the researcher can download them for free. It harvests more than 300,000 theses, but log in is required to access the database.
Italy
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. This catalogue contains all bibliographic informations on doctoral theses submitted to Italian Universities. Click on "Advanced search" menu and then in the "Applicable filters" select "Dissertation" in the drop down menu "Type of material".
PLEIADI. (Acronym for "Portale per la Letteratura scientifica Elettronica Italiana su Archivi aperti e Depositi Istituzionali") It is a project originated from the cooperation between two important university consortia, CASPUR and CILEA. It aims to build a national platform that offers centralized access to the scholarly literature archived in Italian repositories (click here to see the list). There are more than 500,000 items (18,369 dissertations and 36,843 thesis ) (May 2012).
Netherlands
NARCIS. It provides access to scientific information (813,220 items), including open access publications from the repositories of all Dutch universities, KNAW, NWO and a number of research institutes. It provides access to more than 43,000 full-text doctoral e-theses from all Dutch universities (May 2012).
Spain
Dialnet. It is a portal for Hispanic scientific production initiated in 2001 by Universidad de La Rioja. Users can research in the database of references (3,532,635 items) selecting in drop down menu articles, books and theses (almost 22,000 items in May 2012) from a selection of Spanish Universities (click here to see the list).
TDX: Thesis Doctorals en Xarxa. Theses and Dissertations Online is a digital cooperative repository of doctoral theses (12,324 full text theses in deposit and 33,579 theses searchable through OAI-PMH protocol in May 2012) submitted to some Spanish universities (click here to see the list). This repository is managed by the Consortium of University Libraries of Catalonia (CBUC) and the Supercomputing Centre of Catalonia (CESCA), and it is sponsored by the Generalitat (government) of Catalonia. The TDX repository is a member of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD).
Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. Tesis doctorales. The catalogue contains doctoral theses in or about the Spanish languages, which have been submitted to the universities cooperating with the Biblioteca Miguel de Cervantes. In the section "Foros de tesis" the user can intervene and discuss the contents of the theses found in the catalogue.
Other countries
Africa
DATAD : Database of African Theses and Dissertations. A database promoted by AAU (Association of African Universities), it contains searchable citations to dissertations and theses submitted to 270 universities from 46 African countries (see the list here). Subscription is required.
National ETD Portal : South African theses and dissertations. Bibliographic catalogue, it contains almost 30.000 theses written in South Africa.
Australia
Trove. Since April 2011 it is possible to find in this repository the records previously archived in ADT Australasian Digital Theses Program. It is promoted by National Library of Australia and contains 299.539.814 online resources (books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives, ecc…) (May 2012). Trove contains almost a million theses. Some of these are in print format only, others are available online in digital format (click here for more information). ADT is member of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NTDL).
Brazil
Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações. It is a portal providing free access to all theses and dissertations discussed in Brazilian universities (more than 192,000 in May 2012). It is member of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NTDL).
Canada
Theses Canada Portal. This portal provides free access to full text versions of more than 50,000 theses and dissertations from more than 60 Canadian Universities (see the list here). It is member of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NTDL).
India
Union database of Theses. It covers the bibliographic metadata of doctoral theses submitted to 250 Universities and Institutes in India. It has more than 240,000 (May 2012) unique records from all subject areas. It is possible to search by title, author, date, discipline, bibliographical note, subject and individual university.
Single Academic Theses Repositoires
Europe
Finland
France
Université Lyon 2 (also present in Cyberthèsis)
Germany
Great Britain
University of London. School of Oriental and African Studies - SOAS Research Teses
University of Oxford - Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics. Mphil theses
Italy
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano - Dissertations
Università di Bergamo - Dissertations
Università di Bologna - Dissertations
- Università di Milano - Dissertations
Università di Napoli - Dissertations
Università di Pisa - Theses
Università di Roma La Sapienza - Dissertations
Università di Roma Tre - Dissertations
Università di Trento - Dissertations
Università di Trieste - Dissertations. Scienze dell'antichità, filologico letterarie e storico-artistiche
Università degli studi di Torino - Dissertations
Università di Venezia - Theses. Center for Language Sciences
Norway
University of Tromsø - Dissertations
Netherlands
Switzerland
Universität Bern - Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
North and South America
McGill University (Montreal, Canada) - Linguistics Dissertations
MIT - Dept. of linguistics and Philosophy (also present in NDLTD e EDT Archives)
Ohio State University - Dept. of Linguistics (anche presente in NDLTD e EDT Archives)
Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, Canada) - Dept. of Linguistics (also present in NDLTD e Canada Portal)
Stanford University - Dept. of Linguistics, Dissertations
Stony Brook University (NY) Dept. of Linguistics
Universidade de Campina Brazil
University at Buffalo (The State University of New York) - Dept. of Linguistics
University of British Columbia - Dept. of Linguistics
University of California, Berkeley - Dept. of Linguistics
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) - Dept. of Linguistics
University of Hawaii - Dissertations in Linguistics
University of Illinois - Dept. of Linguistics
University of Kansas - KU ScholarWorks
University of Maryland (also present in NDLTD e EDT Archives)
University of Massachusetts at Amherst - Dept. of Linguistics
University of Oregon - Dept. of Linguistics
University of Texas, Arlington - Dept. of Linguistics - Dissertations
University of Texas Library Digital Repository - Dept. of Linguistics
Univerity of Southern California - USC Theses
University of Toronto - Dept. of Linguistics
Other countries
City University of Hong Kong - Dept. of Chinese Translation and Linguistics - Theses
National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan)
Mahidol University - SEA Linguistics Thesis
University of Sydney - Library
University of Stellenbosch Library - Dept. of African Languages - Dissertations
Bibliography
Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
Documents
UNESCO - Guide to Electronic Theses & Dissertations (EDT Guide)
