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EBSCO Open Dissertations

EBSCO Open Dissertations makes electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) more accessible to researchers worldwide. The free portal is designed to benefit universities and their students and make ETDs more discoverable. 

Increasing Discovery & Usage of ETD Research

EBSCO Open Dissertations is a collaboration between EBSCO and BiblioLabs to increase traffic and discoverability of ETD research. You can join the movement and add your theses and dissertations to the database, making them freely available to researchers everywhere while increasing traffic to your institutional repository. 

EBSCO Open Dissertations extends the work started in 2014, when EBSCO and the H.W. Wilson Foundation created American Doctoral Dissertations which contained indexing from the H.W. Wilson print publication, Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by American Universities, 1933-1955. In 2015, the H.W. Wilson Foundation agreed to support the expansion of the scope of the American Doctoral Dissertations database to include records for dissertations and theses from 1955 to the present.

How Does EBSCO Open Dissertations Work?

Your ETD metadata is harvested via OAI and integrated into EBSCO’s platform, where pointers send traffic to your IR.

EBSCO integrates this data into their current subscriber environments and makes the data available on the open web via opendissertations.org .

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Global ETD Search

Search the 6,475,288 electronic theses and dissertations contained in the NDLTD archive:

The archive supports advanced filtering and boolean search.

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This freely accessible database indexes thousands of theses and dissertations by American universities from 1902 to the present and provides links to full text where available.

Dissertations, Doctoral Projects, and Theses - Search Engines

When submitting your work to ProQuest, you will choose whether or not you want your work to be indexed and discoverable by Google Scholar and major search engines.

Note that the information below applies only to discoverability through ProQuest. Scholars and researchers will always be able find your thesis or dissertation in DigitalGeorgetown through Google Scholar and major search engines, subject to any approved embargoes .

If you prefer not to have ProQuest make your work discoverable through search engines, during the ProQuest ETD Administrator  submission process, choose the option "I DO NOT want my work to be discoverable in ProQuest through Google Scholar and other major search engines." This option appears on the Publishing Options page -- choose "Show More" in the Search Engine Discovery section for it to appear on your screen. 

Reference management. Clean and simple.

The top list of academic search engines

1. Google Scholar

4. science.gov, 5. semantic scholar, 6. baidu scholar, get the most out of academic search engines, frequently asked questions about academic search engines, related articles.

Academic search engines have become the number one resource to turn to in order to find research papers and other scholarly sources. While classic academic databases like Web of Science and Scopus are locked behind paywalls, Google Scholar and others can be accessed free of charge. In order to help you get your research done fast, we have compiled the top list of free academic search engines.

Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only lets you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free but also often provides links to full-text PDF files.

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles
• Abstracts: only a snippet of the abstract is available
• Related articles: ✔
• References: ✔
• Cited by: ✔
• Links to full text: ✔
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, RIS, BibTeX

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany. That is also where its name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles (contains duplicates)
• Abstracts: ✔
• Related articles: ✘
• References: ✘
• Cited by: ✘
• Export formats: RIS, BibTeX

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open-access research papers. For each search result, a link to the full-text PDF or full-text web page is provided.

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles
• Links to full text: ✔ (all articles in CORE are open access)
• Export formats: BibTeX

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need anymore to query all those resources separately!

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles and reports
• Links to full text: ✔ (available for some databases)
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX (available for some databases)

Semantic Scholar is the new kid on the block. Its mission is to provide more relevant and impactful search results using AI-powered algorithms that find hidden connections and links between research topics.

• Coverage: approx. 40 million articles
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX

Although Baidu Scholar's interface is in Chinese, its index contains research papers in English as well as Chinese.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 100 million articles
• Abstracts: only snippets of the abstract are available
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX

RefSeek searches more than one billion documents from academic and organizational websites. Its clean interface makes it especially easy to use for students and new researchers.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 1 billion documents
• Abstracts: only snippets of the article are available
• Export formats: not available

Consider using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with Google Scholar and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

Google Scholar is an academic search engine, and it is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only let's you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free, but also often provides links to full text PDF file.

Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI. Sematic Scholar was publicly released in 2015 and uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries for scholarly papers.

BASE , as its name suggest is an academic search engine. It is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that's where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers. For each search result a link to the full text PDF or full text web page is provided.

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need any more to query all those resources separately!

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Resources to Find Dissertations: Home

Description.

This page provides links to databases and websites to find dissertations. This includes links to general databases to find dissertations, databases focused on the humanities, foreign dissertations, dissertations on religion, and dissertations hosted by other universities.

General Databases

Humanities dissertations, foreign dissertations, religion dissertations, dissertations of universities, yale divinity library.

Science Dissertations

• Last Updated: Aug 22, 2023 5:35 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.yale.edu/dissertations

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Theses & Dissertation Databases

Use these databases to find dissertations and theses.

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Theses and Dissertations

Check Cornell’s library catalog , which lists the dissertations available in our library collection.

The print thesis collection in Uris Library is currently shelved on Level 3B before the Q to QA regular-sized volumes. Check with the library staff for the thesis shelving locations in other libraries (Mann, Catherwood, Fine Arts, etc.).

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses

According to ProQuest, coverage begins with 1637. With more than 2.4 million entries,  ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global  is the starting point for finding citations to doctoral dissertations and master’s theses. Dissertations published from 1980 forward include 350-word abstracts written by the author. Master’s theses published from 1988 forward include 150-word abstracts. UMI also offers over 1.8 million titles for purchase in microfilm or paper formats. The full text of more than 930,000 are available in PDF format for immediate free download. Use  Interlibrary Loan  for the titles not available as full text online.

Foreign Dissertations at the Center for Research Libraries

To search for titles and verify holdings of dissertations at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), use the CRL catalog . CRL seeks to provide comprehensive access to doctoral dissertations submitted to institutions outside the U. S. and Canada (currently more than 750,000 titles). One hundred European universities maintain exchange or deposit agreements with CRL. Russian dissertation abstracts in the social sciences are obtained on microfiche from INION.  More detailed information about CRL’s dissertation holdings .

Please see our resource guide on dissertations and theses for additional resources and support.

How to find resources by format

Why use a dissertation or a thesis.

A dissertation is the final large research paper, based on original research, for many disciplines to be able to complete a PhD degree. The thesis is the same idea but for a masters degree.

They are often considered scholarly sources since they are closely supervised by a committee, are directed at an academic audience, are extensively researched, follow research methodology, and are cited in other scholarly work. Often the research is newer or answering questions that are more recent, and can help push scholarship in new directions. 

Search for dissertations and theses

Locating dissertations and theses.

The Proquest Dissertations and Theses Global database includes doctoral dissertations and selected masters theses from major universities worldwide.

• Searchable by subject, author, advisor, title, school, date, etc.
• More information about full text access and requesting through Interlibrary Loan

NDLTD – Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations provides free online access to a over a million theses and dissertations from all over the world.

WorldCat Dissertations and Theses searches library catalogs from across the U.S. and worldwide.

Locating University of Minnesota Dissertations and Theses

Use  Libraries search  and search by title or author and add the word "thesis" in the search box. Write down the library and call number and find it on the shelf. They can be checked out.

Check the  University Digital Conservancy  for online access to dissertations and theses from 2007 to present as well as historic, scanned theses from 1887-1923.

Other Sources for Dissertations and Theses

• Center for Research Libraries
• DART-Europe E-Thesis Portal
• Theses Canada
• Ethos (Great Britain)
• Australasian Digital Theses in Trove
• DiVA (Sweden)
• E-Thesis at the University of Helsinki
• DissOnline (Germany)
• List of libraries worldwide - to search for a thesis when you know the institution and cannot find in the larger collections

University of Minnesota Dissertations and Theses FAQs

What dissertations and theses are available.

With minor exceptions, all doctoral dissertations and all "Plan A" master's theses accepted by the University of Minnesota are available in the University Libraries system. In some cases (see below) only a non-circulating copy in University Archives exists, but for doctoral dissertations from 1940 to date, and for master's theses from 1925 to date, a circulating copy should almost always be available.

"Plan B" papers, accepted in the place of a thesis in many master's degree programs, are not received by the University Libraries and are generally not available. (The only real exceptions are a number of old library school Plan B papers on publishing history, which have been separately cataloged.) In a few cases individual departments may have maintained files of such papers.

In what libraries are U of M dissertations and theses located?

Circulating copies of doctoral dissertations:.

• Use Libraries Search to look for the author or title of the work desired to determine location and call number of a specific dissertation. Circulating copies of U of M doctoral dissertations can be in one of several locations in the library system, depending upon the date and the department for which the dissertation was done. The following are the general rules:
• Dissertations prior to 1940 Circulating copies of U of M dissertations prior to 1940 do not exist (with rare exceptions): for these, only the archival copy (see below) is available. Also, most dissertations prior to 1940 are not cataloged in MNCAT and can only be identified by the departmental listings described below.  
• Dissertations from 1940-1979 Circulating copies of U of M dissertations from 1940 to 1979 will in most cases be held within the Elmer L. Andersen Library, with three major classes of exceptions: dissertations accepted by biological, medical, and related departments are housed in the Health Science Library; science/engineering dissertations from 1970 to date will be located in the Science and Engineering Library (in Walter); and dissertations accepted by agricultural and related departments are available at the Magrath Library or one of the other libraries on the St. Paul campus (the Magrath Library maintains records of locations for such dissertations).  
• Dissertations from 1980-date Circulating copies of U of M dissertations from 1980 to date at present may be located either in Wilson Library (see below) or in storage; consult Libraries Search for location of specific items. Again, exceptions noted above apply here also; dissertations in their respective departments will instead be in Health Science Library or in one of the St. Paul campus libraries.

Circulating copies of master's theses:

• Theses prior to 1925 Circulating copies of U of M master's theses prior to 1925 do not exist (with rare exceptions); for these, only the archival copy (see below) is available.  
• Theses from 1925-1996 Circulating copies of U of M master's theses from 1925 to 1996 may be held in storage; consult Libraries search in specific instances. Once again, there are exceptions and theses in their respective departments will be housed in the Health Science Library or in one of the St. Paul campus libraries.  
• Theses from 1997-date Circulating copies of U of M master's theses from 1997 to date will be located in Wilson Library (see below), except for the same exceptions for Health Science  and St. Paul theses. There is also an exception to the exception: MHA (Masters in Health Administration) theses through 1998 are in the Health Science Library, but those from 1999 on are in Wilson Library.

Archival copies (non-circulating)

Archival (non-circulating) copies of virtually all U of M doctoral dissertations from 1888-1952, and of U of M master's theses from all years up to the present, are maintained by University Archives (located in the Elmer L. Andersen Library). These copies must be consulted on the premises, and it is highly recommended for the present that users make an appointment in advance to ensure that the desired works can be retrieved for them from storage. For dissertations accepted prior to 1940 and for master's theses accepted prior to 1925, University Archives is generally the only option (e.g., there usually will be no circulating copy). Archival copies of U of M doctoral dissertations from 1953 to the present are maintained by Bell and Howell Corporation (formerly University Microfilms Inc.), which produces print or filmed copies from our originals upon request. (There are a very few post-1952 U of M dissertations not available from Bell and Howell; these include such things as music manuscripts and works with color illustrations or extremely large pages that will not photocopy well; in these few cases, our archival copy is retained in University Archives.)

Where is a specific dissertation of thesis located?

To locate a specific dissertation or thesis it is necessary to have its call number. Use Libraries Search for the author or title of the item, just as you would for any other book. Depending on date of acceptance and cataloging, a typical call number for such materials should look something like one of the following:

Dissertations: Plan"A" Theses MnU-D or 378.7M66 MnU-M or 378.7M66 78-342 ODR7617 83-67 OL6156 Libraries Search will also tell the library location (MLAC, Health Science Library, Magrath or another St. Paul campus library, Science and Engineering, Business Reference, Wilson Annex or Wilson Library). Those doctoral dissertations still in Wilson Library (which in all cases should be 1980 or later and will have "MnU-D" numbers) are located in the central section of the third floor. Those master's theses in Wilson (which in all cases will be 1997 or later and will have "MnU-M" numbers) are also located in the central section of the third floor. Both dissertations and theses circulate and can be checked out, like any other books, at the Wilson Circulation desk on the first floor.

How can dissertations and theses accepted by a specific department be located?

Wilson Library contains a series of bound and loose-leaf notebooks, arranged by department and within each department by date, listing dissertations and theses. Information given for each entry includes name of author, title, and date (but not call number, which must be looked up individually). These notebooks are no longer current, but they do cover listings by department from the nineteenth century up to approximately 1992. Many pre-1940 U of M dissertations and pre-1925 U of M master's theses are not cataloged (and exist only as archival copies). Such dissertations can be identified only with these volumes. The books and notebooks are shelved in the general collection under these call numbers: Wilson Ref LD3337 .A5 and Wilson Ref quarto LD3337 .U9x. Major departments of individual degree candidates are also listed under their names in the GRADUATE SCHOOL COMMENCEMENT programs of the U of M, available in University Archives and (for recent years) also in Wilson stacks (LD3361 .U55x).

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You can use the same search strategies you use in your every day life to search the internet (you've been doing it for years!). You can also apply the advice in the Search Strategy, Advanced Search Techniques , and Find Articles tabs on the left to make you more effective. 

The tabs in this box highlight different areas of the internet you may want to consider in your search, beyond Kemp Library's databases - or if the assignment asks for a website beyond a newspaper or magazine, etc.

Don't forget to evaluate your websites - check out the Website tab on the left.  

If you run into a website where you can't navigate it easily or the search won't work, links are broken, etc. try going to a search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing), and searching the name of the website and keywords of what you're looking for.  This is a workaround strategy.

You're having trouble finding information on the U.S. Census Bureau's website . No matter what you do, the pages you can find on poverty aren't right or are the wrong information. Go to Google.com (or whatever your search engine of choice is), type in "us census bureau poverty 2017 " and see what comes up.  You can get more specific or use different keywords or keyword types - like poverty and children, poverty threshold, poverty and hunger, etc.  Your results will all be from the Census Bureau's website so you can navigate it outside of the webpage's own navigation (see image below).  Try to use terms your search engine can find.

You know how to use Google, but do you know how to get to the advanced search in Google ? You can also edit your search settings in Google. There is a video at the bottom of the box on how Google works as well. 

Don't forget about Google Scholar or Google Books either.

You can access the Advanced Search and your Search Settings by clicking on Settings in the lower right-hand corner of Google.com .

The top ten search engines in the world as of 2022 are :

• Baidu  (Chinese)
• Yandex  (Russian)
• DuckDuckGo - if you're into your privacy, this is your search engine. They don't track your searches or information, they have browser extensions, and they have some other nice features you may be interested in. 
• Ecosia   - this helps finance planting trees and restoration projects through your searching. It's a partner of Bing
• InternetArchive - you can see how websites used to look, as well as access tons of freely available content.

We also recommend  Wolframalpha - searches formulas, computations, calculations, and more! This is not your normal search engine.

A great science search engine is Science Stack - Academic Search Engine .  This combines the search of Mendeley and PLoS and allows for data interaction in new and creative ways. Great for academic science searching. This also has Firefox extensions and add-ons.  

Metadata Search Engines use other search engines to perform a search - typically they search multiple search engines at once and aggregate the data into one result stream. Some of these are better than others, but it's up to you if you want to consider using them or not. A major con is that most aren't able to sift through the results properly so you get a lot of irrelevant results. What's available changes frequently, but you can find out more over at Wikipedia .  A couple examples are All4One, one of the first metasearch engines, and Metacrawler . You can also check out this article if you're interested in trying others.

Web Directories have two typical structures. One is hierarchical, which lead from general topics to more specific ones, and usually covers a broad range of topics. The other typically just lists sources in some sort of order, like alphabetical and covers resources on a specific topic like Game of Thrones fan theories.   The turnover rate on these can be high, but some stick around for a while. One that is a great resource for college students is the Directory of Open Access Journals.

Have you heard the term "the invisible web", "deep web", or "the dark web"? This refers to the internet that is below the surface of what most search engines, including Google, look at and access.  The fact is, most information in things like databases is completely inaccessible to search engines like Google or Bing.  Information that Google or Bing can see is called the " visible " web.

Information on the invisible or deep web can be accessed, but only through specific channels.  Anything that can't be found through a normal search engine like Google or Bing is considered the deep web. Why is this worth your time? The invisible web is estimated to be thousands of times larger and the visible web.

The dark web is a small part of the deep web that has been deliberately hidden and is generally inaccessible unless you're an IT wizard.

So how do you use the deep web?  Two of the broadest are the Virtual Library , despite the old school interface and Infoplease .  You can also check out these lists of deep web resources

• 10 Search Engines to Explore the Invisible Web
• The Ultimate Guide to the Invisible Web from OEDb (search tools at bottom)
• FindArticles : search articles from a variety of publications.
• Find Law : find information on legal issues organized by category.

BrightPlanet is a company who mines the deep web for various companies and reasons as their day job. They have a couple articles on their website as well that go into more detail about what the deep web is , the differences between the dark web and the deep web , and more! They've also written a white paper that you can get for free at the dark web link.

"Stopwords" or "stop words" are words that search engines, datagases , or any search interface may ignore, skip or may completely interrupt your search.  They may also affect how your results are listed (or in technical terms, "indexed"). These are usually common words such as " the, a, an, but ". You can see what a specific search engine or database, etc.'s stopwords are by Googling or otherwise looking up the name of the interface and " stopwords ".

Example: "what are Google stop words" or "what are EBSCOhost stop words"

You can see EBSCOhost's list of sample stop words and how they handle them here, or you can see the same information in the attached PDF.

• EBSCOhost Stop Words

Keyboard shortcuts that work in every browser - these will assist you in becoming a master of time efficiency! There are tons more out there that may be of use to you.

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Finding Theses and Dissertations

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International Theses: Search Tools

Proquest dissertations and theses.

A comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world from 1861-present. Full text  since 1997. Abstracts  since 1980 for doctoral dissertations and 1988 for masters' theses. Citations  since 1861.

Citations are indexed in Web of Science in the  ProQuest ™ Dissertations & Theses Citation Index  collection. 

Center for Research Libraries

CRL holds more than 800,000 doctoral dissertations outside of the U.S. and Canada. Search dissertations in the dissertations section of the CRL catalogue. Digitized dissertations can be searched in the catalogue's e-resources section.

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

A collection of more than 800,000 international full text theses and dissertations.

Google Scholar

Try searching Google Scholar for theses posted on institutional digital repositories or on personal web pages.

ScienceDirect

A web search engine devoted to Science and Technology.

Search for dissertations, theses and published material based on theses catalogued in WorldCat by OCLC member libraries worldwide. In Advanced Search, you can search by author, title, subject, year, and keyword. Under Subtype Limits, select Theses/Dissertation from the Any Content menu

International Theses: By Country

Österreichische Dissertationsdatenbank

The Austrian dissertation database contains the bibliographical data of dissertations approved in Austria from 1990 on, and in most cases the relevant abstracts. (This website is hosted by the National Library of Austria).

National Library of Australia’s Trove Service

Search for full text digital theses from Australian universities.  On the Advanced search screen under Format, select Thesis.

DART-Europe :  Access to full text theses and dissertations from many countries in Europe.

Europeana : Additional electronic dissertations from other European libraries.

Système universitaire de documentation  (Sudoc): Provides access to records and some electronic theses and dissertations published at French research institutions.

Fichier central des thèses

DissOnline provides information on the subject of electronic university publications. It can be used to find out directly all about online dissertations and post-doctoral theses. Sample documents can be downloaded to provide help in the creation of electronic university publications. For more information about the portal, please go to  German National Library  website  (DNB) .

México

TESIUNAM: Tesis del Sistema Bibliotecario de la Unam

(Theses from the National University of Mexico / Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). To search for electronic theses, click on “tesis electrónicas (REDUNAM).”

Middle East

The Center for Research Libraries and the British Library have made available online 400 UK doctoral theses focusing on the Middle East, Islamic studies, and related subjects.  More information .

The Netherlands

Some Dutch e-theses are available through NARCIS.

South America 

• Some electronic theses from Bolivia, Brasil, Chile and Peru can be found at  Cybertesis.NET , a portal created by the University of Chile (Information Services & Library System) that provides an easily accessible tool to full text electronic theses published in different universities of the world.

For more university/national library catalogues, search for the word University/Universidad and the country (Argentina, Peru, etc.) in Google. Find the link to the library ( biblioteca ) and search the catalogue for theses ( tesis ). You may need to click on the advanced search function ( búsqueda guíada  or  búsqueda avanzada ) and select tesis as a format or type. ​

There are several portals/catalogues in Spain for theses and dissertations. Here are some examples listed on Spain’s  National Library  website:

Spain’s Ministry of Education thesis database (TESEO)

Biblioteca Virtual del Español (on the Biblioteca Virtual, Miguel de Cervantes website)

Universidad Complutense de Madrid’s catalogue

TDX (Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa)

This is a cooperative repository of digital theses from the University of Cataluña and other autonomous communities (such as Murcia, Cantabria, Barcelona, and Oviedo)

Switzerland

For print and electronic dissertations, please consult the  Swiss National Library  website.

• NDLTD: National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan is an open full-text permanent archive of scholarly research in Taiwan.

EThOS : Access to doctoral dissertations (paper and electronic) from UK institutions of higher education.

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> Thesis Network > Selection of sites

Selection of reference sites

Guides and documentation.

• Contractual framework of the educational exception : how to use and quote works in your thesis?
• Documentation for doctoral students (provided byAbes): understanding the national repository for doctoral theses; reporting your thesis subject; using the theses.fr search engine
• Guide to the doctorate : 23 practical sheets proposed by the National Association of Doctors (ANDès) for doctoral students, doctors, institutions, doctoral schools, etc.
• Guide to Copyright (2017) : this guide deals with legal issues arising in intellectual property law .
• Open Science - Codes and software : this booklet looks at the specific issues involved in opening up the codes and software produced and used in scientific research. 
• Sharing scientific publication data - A guide for researchers : the aim of this guide is to familiarize researchers with the steps involved in sharing publication data.
• Carnet Questions éthique et droit en SHS : a guide to good ethical and legal practice in the dissemination of SHS data.

French doctoral schools

• Campus France directory of doctoral schools : consult the list of doctoral schools
• Campus France : finding a research laboratory
• ScanR : consult the directory of French research and innovation

Doctors and PhD students

• Ma thèse en 180 secondes : organised in France since 2014 by the CNRS and the CPU - Conférence des présidents d'université, this competition, inspired by the 3 Minute Thesis launched by the University of Queensmand (Australia), aims to make people understand their research in three minutes and to the greatest number.
• MESR - doctorate
• MESR - doctoral training
• MESR - doctoral funding
• MESR - professional integration of doctoral students
• ANDès - National Association of Doctors
• Campus France - French agency for the promotion of higher education, hospitality and international mobility
• CGE - Conférence des Grandes écoles - "publications" section  
• CJC - Confederation of Young Researchers   
• Kastler Foundation  
• Intelli'agence - Bernard Gregory Association
• HCERES - High Council for Research and Higher Education

Search for a thesis

• An extraction of all data relating to doctoral theses defended since 1985 is available online at data.gouv.fr: https: //www.data.gouv.fr/fr/datasets/theses-soutenues-en-france-depuis-1985/  
• Catalogue Sudoc : national bibliography of theses. Consult the help page dedicated to thesis research in the Sudoc

Access the full text of the theses

Numerous open archives and distribution platforms have been set up by doctoral-accredited institutions and/or IST operators such as CCSD (Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe).

• HAL theses : open archive managed by the CCSD for the open access distribution of doctoral theses
• AURORE : platform for student work at the University of Limoges (doctoral theses, practice theses, dissertations)
• CITHER : INSA Lyon thesis portal
• ENS - Institut Français de l'Éducation : portal to theses defended in France since 2003 in the fields of education and training.
• OATAO : Open Archive Toulouse Archive Ouverte
• PASTEL : ParisTech online theses / HAL ParisTech portal collection
• PEPITE : the University of Lille's institutional archive provides access to doctoral theses, practice theses, teaching resources and speech therapy dissertations.

On the international scene

• ADT : theses defended in the 22 largest Australian universities
• BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine: meta-search engine referencing and providing access to over 120 million full-text academic documents, including theses 
• BICTEL : common directory of electronic theses of the universities of the French community of Belgium
• DART-Europe : full-text theses from 28 European countries
• Dialnet : portal of Spanish theses in SHS
• DissOnline : Database of German electronic theses
• DIVA : database of theses and research papers from 28 Scandinavian universities
• EThOS : UK electronic theses database
• NDLTD : Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
• OATD : Open Access Theses and Dissertations , a portal set up by the library of Wake Forest University (USA), which harvests several international directories of electronic theses in open access
• RERODOC : electronic library of the RERO network (network of French-speaking Switzerland) including books, theses, dissertations in full text
• Shodhganga : reservoir of Indian theses.
• Teseo : catalogue of doctoral theses defended in Spanish universities
• Theses Canada : catalog of theses and dissertations produced in Canadian universities
• Toubk@l : national catalogue of theses and dissertations of Morocco

Access to current thesis topics

• Otrohati : reporting on theses being prepared in Moroccan doctoral study centres.
• theses.fr : listing of theses being prepared in French higher education institutions.

Buy a reproduced thesis

From 1986 to 2016, theses deposited in printed form were reproduced on microfiche by the ANRT - Atelier National de Reproduction des Thèses . The mission of the ANRT was initially to ensure the reproduction of theses on microfiche and their distribution to institutions. Following the decree of 25 May 2016 , which established the transition to electronic filing for all French doctoral theses, the ANRT ceased this national mission.

On the other hand, the ANRT offers the "Thèse à la carte" service : theses for which a contract has been signed between the ANRT and the author are digitised and reproduced in their entirety, without reworking. These theses are listed in the "Thèse à la carte" catalogue and are available for sale to individuals (teachers, researchers, students ....) and/or organisations (bookshops, libraries, etc.) who request them.

• Arabesques n°78 (April-May-June 2015): Dossier "The thesis in all its states: filing, reporting, promoting". 
• Valorization of academic production - Collection, conservation, dissemination - Mennessier Anne-Laurence ; Daubernat Séverine ; Giloux Marianne ; Mauger Perez Isabelle - BBF, 2011, n°1 
• New thesis repository, new positioning for libraries? - Feedback from the common documentation services of Lille 2 and Valenciennes - Bihan Solenn ; Cambier-Meerschman Perrine ; Granger Sabrina - BBF, 2011, n°1

Studies and reports

• L'état de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche en France (The state of higher education and research in France ) - annual figures published by the MESR (Ministry of Higher Education and Research)
• The French Open Science Barometer - annual statistical monitoring of French doctoral theses available in open access.
• A more favourable integration and employment conditions of PhDs for 2016 graduates compared to 2014 graduates - Note d'information du SIES (September 2021)
• Doctors of engineering: the choice of a professional insertion in the private sector - Note d'information du SIES (September 2020)
• The doctorate in France: from choice to career pursuit - report by the General Inspectorate of Education, Sport and Research (July 2020)
• International mobility of young employed PhDs - Note d'information du SIES (October 2019)
• L'état de l'emploi scientifique en France - biennial statistical publication by MESRI (2018 edition)
• Repères et références statistiques - MESR annual publication
• CIFRE PhD - article by Romain Perronnet (UPEC) and Nahla Salameh Bchara (École des Mines de Saint-Etienne)
• Young doctors; profile, career path, integration - APEC quantitative study (January 2015)
• The professional future of young PhDs: what path, what insertion 5 years after the thesis ? - qualitative study by APEC (October 2014)  
• The University and the professional world: what are the challenges for the doctorate? - Labex Hastec conference (January 2013) 
• Doctors: a long march towards stable employment

History of the doctorate and the deposit of theses

• Becoming scholars: theses and doctorates of letters in the 19th century: virtual exhibition
• Carnet Es lettres - Les thèses de doctorat ès lettres en France au XIXe siècle : this notebook contains posts and actions linked to the "Es lettres" project, whose aim is to study the corpus of doctoral theses in literature defended in the 19th century.
• Theses and other academic writings: identification and location: despite some obsolete information, this guide published by the BnF in 2005, contains interesting information on the history of the doctorate as well as a chronology of legislative texts on the deposit of theses from 1923 to 1985
• Françoise Huguet, Les thèses de doctorat ès lettres soutenues en France de la fin du XVIIIe siècle à 1940 (Doctor of Letters theses defended in France from the end of the 18th century to 1940 ), November 2009 - LARHRA - Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes, UMR CNRS 5190 - online
•  Edouard Des Places, Cent cinquante ans du doctorat es lettres (1810-1960), Bulletin de l'Association Guillaume Budé , 4e série, 2, juin 1969, p.209-228 - online