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The University does not require electronic copies of Masters Theses to be deposited in Apollo, which means that the Thesis team does not deposit individual Masters Theses via Symplectic Elements.

However, there is a batch upload arrangement in place for faculties/departments who wish to deposit their Masters Theses in Apollo. Interested faculties/departments should contact the Thesis team for further information ( [email protected]).

Key features of the batch upload arrangement

• All Theses deposited via the batch upload will be made immediately open access in Apollo;
• Faculties/departments will be provided with a shared drive, which they will use to provide electronic copies of Theses, Deposit Licence Agreements and metadata;
• Faculties/departments create their own local policies to determine the number and frequency of their uploads to their shared drive;
• Batch uploads are run once per term, at the end of each term by Repository staff.

Guidelines for faculties/departments

As all Theses that are deposited into Apollo via the batch upload arrangement will be immediately available (open access) in Apollo, it is only suitable for Theses that do not contain:

• uncleared copyrighted material and/or
• unauthorised confidential/sensitive information.

However, Faculties/departments may instead opt provide a redacted version of any Theses that do contain such content. If this option is chosen, Faculties/departments should deposit the original, unredacted Thesis and a redacted version. We have further information on our website about redacting material from theses.

It is important that these issues are resolved in advance of uploading the thesis to their shared drive, because depositing these items into Apollo may breach copyright or GDPR laws. If in doubt about a thesis, faculties/departments are advised not to include it in the batch upload request.

Should a Thesis have supplementary data files, the data should be uploaded separately via Symplectic Elements by the faculty/departmental administrator.

Third party copyright

Copyright held by someone other than the author is known as third party copyright. If an author has used third party copyright material, they should ascertain whether or not they need permission to use it in their thesis.

We recommend that authors obtain permission to include material as they are researching. Clearing permission can take a long time, so unless a redacted version is supplied, it is not appropriate to include Theses for batch upload where permissions have been sought but are still outstanding. It is also not appropriate to include theses where permission has not been sought, or where permission has been denied.

Please be aware that different copyright rules apply to the hardbound copy that is deposited in the library for reference and the electronic version that is deposited in the repository. This is because the hardbound copy is considered unpublished and the electronic version, if made available as open access, is considered published. The thesis must credit the copyright holder(s) and source(s) of all third party copyright material.

There is  more information on third party copyright on our website .

Sensitive information

Sensitive information is data that must be protected for the privacy or security of an individual, group, or organisation. The kinds of sensitive information most likely to be included in theses are:

• Commercial (trade secrets or information which could damage commercial interests)
• Health and safety (information which could damage the health and/or safety of an individual)
• Information provided in confidence Personal (as defined by the  Data Protection Act 2018  - GDPR)
• Culturally sensitive material (information or arguments which some cultural groups might find offensive or upsetting)
• Content referring to legal cases

The  Freedom of Information Act 2000  sets out the types of sensitive information to which legally enforceable restrictions may be applied. The University of Cambridge is bound by this Act. It may decide to apply restrictions to other types of information, including theses deposited in the University Library or Departmental and Faculty libraries, but they are not legally binding if not falling under the Act.

Unless a redacted version is supplied, it is also not appropriate to include theses for batch upload that contain sensitive/confidential information without authorisation from whom the information relates.

There is  more information about sensitive material on our website

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Q. How do I access a dissertation from the University of Cambridge?

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Answered By: Jenni Lecky-Thompson Last Updated: Mar 22, 2023     Views: 11258

Finding print dissertations

The University Library holds all Cambridge dissertations from 1921 onwards and they can be ordered from the Manuscript Reading Room (01223 333143, [email protected] ). They can't be borrowed or supplied for inter-library loan.

Information on finding theses and dissertations can be found on the Theses Libguide .   Details of all Cambridge theses approved since 1970 can be found using iDiscover . They are also listed in the EThOS database.

Copying of Cambridge dissertations is subject to regulations made by the Board of Graduate Studies. Personal applications for the purchase of copies of dissertations for private research can be directed to the Digital Content Unit ( http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/digital-content-unit ; email [email protected] ). There is a charge for this. To purchase dissertations on behalf of an institution (e.g. for library stock) the author's permission is required before a copy can be supplied.

Finding digitised dissertations

Apollo , the University's institutional repository, holds full-text digital versions of several hundred Cambridge PhD. theses. This is a rapidly growing collection deposited on a voluntary basis.

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When it comes to thinking about dissertations, it's useful to know how and where to look for material, both within Cambridge and further afield. The following is some guidance on finding various different types of material, whether primary or secondary.

Finding books in Cambridge

Finding books outside cambridge, finding articles.

• Unpublished material

Online sources

Subject gateways.

For further help our LibGuide has lots of information about how to carry out research in History.

Finding secondary material

The best place to begin looking for secondary material is a specialist bibliographical database covering your area of interest, eg. the Bibliography of British and Irish History . Teaching staff will be able to advise on what databases there are in your subject area. There may not be a specialist database covering your topic, in which case a more general literature search may be the best way to begin. Literature searches may also help you to find supplementary material, and to identify what is available within Cambridge.

Literature searches will help you to identify a viable topic of research, or a new angle from which to approach a subject, and they will also ensure that you do not duplicate work in progress. You will need to be compiling lists of material to consult at the same time as taking organised notes and writing; you should not wait to complete the reading before beginning to write.

For searching across library catalogues in Cambridge, use iDiscover ; as well as searching library holdings it also retrieves records for ejournals and ebooks, and can be extended to search databases such as JSTOR . You can also turn searches into RSS feeds (for alerts when any relevant items are added to the catalogue).

The University's ebooks@cambridge team subscribe to thousands of ebook titles, including key resources such as the Cambridge Histories and Cambridge Companions. These are searchable through iDiscover; if there is an electronic copy of the book you are looking for, it will have the phrase "[electronic resource]" in the record after the title, and you can follow the link in the record directly through to the text. Ebooks are easy to use, can be accessed from home and can normally have several users accessing the text simultaneously, so access is almost always available.

You may need to extend your search beyond Cambridge, to see if there is material available elsewhere which is not held by any of the libraries in the university. Library Hub Discover  is the best way for finding material held in libraries in the United Kingdom; it is the combined catalogue of the UK's major research libraries (including the British Library, National Library of Scotland and National Library of Wales), as well as various specialist research libraries and collections. The catalogue contains over 32 million records. It is possible to search by subject, author, title or keyword, and you can restrict your search by date, place published, type of material (eg. periodicals, maps), or language. Search results will display where an item is held, and provide links to an electronic copy, if there is a freely available one. 

The Document Delivery Service is available to help support students access difficult to locate material. This includes Inter-Library loan and Rapid Inter-Library loan.

If you are working away from Cambridge (for example, during the vacation), you may be able to get access to other higher education libraries in your area; visit SCONUL Access  for more information.

For catalogues of libraries outside the United Kingdom try WorldCat , a catalogue of over 10,000 libraries, which indexes 1.5 billion items.

You will need to look at journal articles as well as books, as journals are often where the latest, most up-to-date historical research is published. There are several citation databases which you can search for articles which might be relevant to your topic. As well as general historical databases, there are also more specialised ones, covering various regions, periods and topics. (Most of these will require a Raven password for off-campus access.) To search across the full range of electronic journals Cambridge subscribes to go to the ejournals@cambridge page. It is also possible to search across popular databases for article titles (as opposed to journal titles) on iDiscover.

Key general databases

• Historical Abstracts: This covers the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada). Published since 1954, it indexes over 3,100 academic historical journals in more than 40 languages; thousands of new citations are added every year.
• Scopus: This database is by far the largest citation database available to members of the University. It covers a range of disciplines and includes information about where articles have been cited.

Digital journal archives

• JSTOR: A digital archive of over 1,000 journals; it can be subject-searched and gives immediate online access to articles in titles to which the University subscribes.
• Project Muse: Full-text access to nearly 500 journals from over 130 scholarly publishers.

Region/country databases

• America: History and Life: A companion title to Historical Abstracts. There is not online access, but the print copy can be found in the University Library (North Front, Floor 6, classmark: P660.b.31).
• Bibliography of British and Irish History: A bibliographical database of historical writing dealing with the British Isles, the British Empire and the Commonwealth, from 55 B.C. to the present, containing over 500,000 records. (It is worth noting that it is not an exhaustive bibliography of works relating to the British Empire and the Commonwealth; it covers the relations of those countries in the Empire and the Commonwealth with Britain.)
• Bibliography of Asian Studies: A bibliographical database covering articles and book chapters on all parts of Asia published since 1971.
• Index Islamicus: A bibliographical database of books, articles and reviews on Islam and the Muslim world.

Chronological databases

• International Medieval Bibliography: A bibliographical database covering medieval civilization, containing over 440,000 records.

Topical databases

• ATLA Religion Database: A bibliographical database covering theology and church history, containing over 1.7 million records.
• Bibliography of the History of Art: A bibliographical database on European and American art from late antiquity to the present, covering material published between 1975 and 2007.
• History of Science, Technology & Medicine: amalgamation of a few separate bibliographies. Includes historiography and the role of science in society and culture from prehistoric times onwards.

Unpublished material (dissertations and theses)

There are several different databases for searching for university dissertations and theses, whether produced in the United Kingdom or further afield.

• History Online: Contains a directory of history theses and research Masters produced in the U.K. since 1970, along with a list of theses currently in progress.
• EThOS: The national thesis service: a British Library-administered database of over 300,000 theses from U.K. universities.  Those which have already been digitized can be downloaded for free, but if the thesis you want to look at has not yet been digitized, you will have to pay a fee.  (Cambridge dissertations are listed on Ethos but not supplied by the service.
• ProQuest Digital Dissertations: A database of 2.4 million dissertation and theses citations from 700 academic institutions worldwide, offering full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997.
• Apollo: Cambridge University's institutional repository.  Includes a collection of voluntarily deposited Ph.D. theses.

Finding primary sources

You can access more online resources through iDiscover and the UL's eresources@cambridge page , which includes links to visual and sound resources, film and video services, and newspapers (both archives and current).

Some examples of online collections of primary source material:

• American Memory (Library of Congress): online collection of documents for American history, comprising written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music.
• British History Online: digital library of primary and secondary sources for medieval and modern history of the British Isles
• Empire Online: online collection of original documents relating to empire studies, including exploration journals, periodicals, government papers, maps.
• First World War: Personal Experiences: database of digital images of original documents, including diaries, letters, personal narratives, scrapbooks, and visual sources.
• German History in Documents and Images: digital collection of original historical materials documenting German history from the beginning of the early modern period to the present.
• UK Parliamentary Papers includes over 200,00 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715, with supplementary material back to 1688.

In Cambridge

ArchiveSearch  provides finding aids and links to digital records for the majority of archives located in the city of Cambridge., including the archives of many colleges, and of the Churchill Archives Centre .

In the United Kingdom

You may need to visit archives outside Cambridge as part of your research. To find out what archival material is held where, there are various union catalogues of archive material:

• National Archives: Formerly the Public Record Office, this repository holds the national archives for England, Wales and the United Kingdom (there are separate national record offices for Scotland and Northern Ireland). They have extensive online catalogues , which can be searched by subject, and you can access their online collections and download copies of documents.
• National Register of Archives: A register of over 44,000 unpublished lists and catalogues, detailing the nature and location of manuscripts and historical records relating to British history. These are "non-official" archives covering the holdings of local record offices, national and university libraries (including Cambridge), specialist repositories, museums and other bodies in the United Kingdom and abroad, as well as papers held privately by individuals, firms and institutions. The research guides on the website explain how the National Register of Archives can be used for locating material on particular topics.
• Archives Hub: A national gateway to descriptions of archives of over 180 UK repositories (including Oxford and Cambridge); again, you can search by subject.

To search the holdings of archives outside the United Kingdom, try Archive Grid , a major catalogue of historical documents, personal papers and family history material held in repositories around the world; you can search for collections by topic.

Subject gateways are online portals to subject-specific resources, and can be excellent places to look for more information on your topic. Some gateways where the sites have been evaluated by experts include:

• History Online: Created by the Institute of Historical Research, this initiative indexes books and journal articles, details history lecturers in the U.K., digital history projects, and current and past historical research.
• History Data Service: This project collects, preserves, and promotes the use of digital resources, which result from or support historical research, learning and teaching.
• Connected Histories: A collection of digital resources on early modern and 19th century British history.
• Online resources
• Electronic resources by paper
• Libraries, archives, museums, galleries
• Keeping up-to-date

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Visit the Theses & Dissertations LibGuide for more information about postgraduate theses access

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Open access at the University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is committed to disseminating its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, it supports its staff in making their research outputs freely available.

The University's research repository houses a wide range of research outputs, ranging from published articles and conference papers, through to datasets, theses, videos and molecular structures.

Browse the exciting range of our Open Access research outputs:

Management of Open Access at the University of Cambridge

Open Access at the University of Cambridge is managed by two dedicated support services: Open Access and  Research Data Management . These groups assist the University's researchers and research students in making their research outputs freely accessible in the public domain. The University’s Open Access Project Board oversees these activities.

Open Access

The Open Access team provides advice and guidance on making research publications freely available in the public domain. To ensure compliance with HEFCE policies, Cambridge researchers upload their author accepted manuscripts to the open access team as soon as their research article is accepted for a publication. The team makes manuscripts available in the University repository , respecting publisher copyright restrictions, and provides guidance on article processing charges and appropriate licensing, according to the funder's policy and the Cambridge Open Access policy framework .

Research Data

The Research Data team helps with all aspects of research data management - from experimental design, organising and backing up research data, to data deposition and sharing. Please browse through this website for guidance on research data management , to see the University of Cambridge Research Data Policy Framework, to find information about your funder's requirements , or to see available options for data deposition and sharing .

If you have any questions about research data management, please do not hesitate to contact the Research Data Management team directly.

Open Access Project Board

The Open Access Project Board is composed of senior members of the University of Cambridge and it oversees the activity of the Open Access and Research Data Management teams. The Open Access Project Board publishes minutes from its regular meetings.

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Printed theses held in Cambridge

Copies of all postgraduate theses written by students at the University of Cambridge must be deposited in Cambridge University Library. Their online Theses catalogue contains records of theses approved from 1970 onwards. For pre-1970 theses there is a card catalogue in the Manuscripts Reading Room. See the Manuscripts Department's web page on Theses for further information.

Electronic Cambridge theses

From 1 October 2017 all PhD students are required to deposit both a hard copy and an electronic copy of their thesis to the University Library. Find out more on how to access Cambridge electronic theses and how to deposit yours if you are a Cambridge PhD student, on the Office of Scholarly Comunications' Theses website.

UK theses, electronic and in print

You may need to consult a thesis published by another university in the UK. For information on how to access these via the University Library, see their Inter-Library Loans website.

The British Library also has a new Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS) .

International theses, electronic and in print

Try some of the "Related links" on the right hand side of this page to locate national and international theses, either in digital or print format. Many universities around the world now require their Ph.D. or Masters students to provide their theses in electronic format, and to deposit them on their institutional repositories so that they can subsequently be downloaded by everyone for free. Try finding the website for the university that published the thesis that you are interested in and then search for "theses" or "Electronic Theses and Dissertations" or "ETDs" - or try a Google search using the same search terms and the name of the university.

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses A&I is a comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, dating back to 1743. Access for members of the University of Cambridge is to the abstracts only but it is a good source for finding out the bibliographic details of theses. 

Useful links

• Centre for Research Libraries, CRL
• DART-Europe
• dissertations.se (Swedish theses)
• DiVA (Scandinavian theses)
• EThOS (UK e-theses)
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)
• OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories)
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The Manuscripts Reading Room administers the University's collection of doctoral and higher degree theses. Before 1920, degrees were awarded on the basis of examinations or certificates of research, and little written work composed specifically for such purposes survives, other than a small collection of Advanced Student Dissertations. Revised regulations were approved, instituting the new degree of PhD, which required a written work to be deposited in the University Library. Our collection of doctoral theses thus dates from 1921, when just four arrived in the Library. Statistics illustrate a great increase in output: for the academic year 2015-2016 just over one thousand new dissertations were approved and added to our collection. There are now over 39,000 volumes.

Contact: Manuscripts Reading Room (01223 333143, [email protected] )

Cambridge theses held by CUL

A small but growing proportion of Cambridge theses are available to consult in digital form in the university repository Apollo .

See the Office of Scholarly Communication's webpages on theses .

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PhD theses (HPS)

We hold bound copies of all PhD theses completed by students in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science in the University of Cambridge since at least the mid 1980s. These are available from the staff desk (you will be asked to sign a copyright declaration form). They can be read in the library, but may not be copied or borrowed.

All our PhD theses are catalogued on iDiscover : find them by searching for author name and title keywords in the same way as for a printed book. Alternatively, select the Whipple as the holding library and search for "dissertation" to get a more comprehensive list. 

In addition, the following lists give you a quick overview of the PhD theses we hold, in alphabetical and chronological order:

• HPS PhD theses (alphabetical)
• HPS PhD theses (chronological)

If the thesis you are looking for is not held here at the Whipple it's possible it was submitted to a different department or faculty in the University. Cambridge University Library holds hard copies of all PhD theses in all subjects approved by the University of Cambridge since 1921. These can be consulted in person in the Manuscripts Room .

How can I obtain a copy of a Cambridge PhD thesis?

Unfortunately we are not able to provide copies of PhD theses, either in hard copy or digital, from the Whipple. However, our colleagues in the Digital Content Unit at the University Library may be able to help; visit their website for further information about their image ordering service and to access the online request form.

Other HPS theses

The Library has a small collection of PhD and Masters-level theses and dissertations on a variety of HPS topics from other universities, acquired by donation. These are not catalogued on iDiscover, but are listed separately. Please ask staff for details.

MPhil and Part III dissertations

We have a large - but not comprehensive - collection of MPhil dissertations completed in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science since the late 1990s. These are catalogued on iDiscover , and are available for use in the Library only. Please ask at the staff desk for further details.

The following lists give you a quick overview of the MPhil and Part III dissertations we hold:

MPhil History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine

• Alphabetical list
• Chronological list

MPhil Health, Medicine and Society

Part iii history and philosophy of science.

• Alphabetical List
• Chronological List

Sample Part II, Part III and MPhil coursework

We also have a selection of sample work submitted for Part II, Part III and MPhil exams in recent years, which is available to consult in the Library. This includes Part II Primary Source Essays and Dissertations, Part III Research Papers, and MPhil Essays. The samples include a range of historical and philosophical approaches and are intended to provide good examples of each type of work. Please ask at the staff desk for further details.

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If you have been accepted for publication - upload your manuscript by  clicking here

What is open access.

Open Access is simply making published research results freely available to anyone with an internet connection rather than keeping those results hidden behind a subscription paywall. The term open access was coined in 2002 as part of the  Budapest Open Access Initiative .

The majority of scholarly journals are only available to people who pay a subscription or who are members of an institution who pays a subscription. Open Access uses digital technology to make research findings widely available. There are two ways to make work available: either by depositing a copy of their published work in a repository or by publishing in a journal that makes the work freely available immediately.

Why Open Access?

A large proportion of the research undertaken in the UK is supported by public funds. The researchers do the research and write up their work into journal articles, conference papers, books chapters or books. Once submitted for publication editors (other researchers) assess the work and send it out for peer review which is conducted by the academic community. Researchers do not receive payment or royalties for their published articles. In addition, the tasks of peer review and editing are considered to be part of the scholarly process and are undertaken without payment.

Once the work is published, institutional libraries (which are publicly funded) pay large amounts for subscriptions to journals. This means that people affiliated with these institutions can access the research but those without an affiliation cannot. Practitioners such as pharmacists, teachers, nurses, business people are unable to see the latest developments in their field.

How do we make work Open Access?

Making a copy of published work available in a subject-based or an institutional repository is referred to as ‘green’ Open Access. The  Cambridge repository  contains many thousands of open access items. You can deposit your work to the repository  here . Examples of subject-based repositories include such as  arXiv  in the high energy physics and mathematics disciplines, Social Science Research Network ( SSRN ), Research Papers in Economics ( RePEc ) and  PubMed Central . 

Alternatively researchers can publish in an Open Access journal, where the publisher of a scholarly journal provides free online access to the full content of the journal.  Business models for this form of Open Access vary.  In some cases, the publisher charges the author’s institution or funding body an article processing charge (APC). All Public Library of Science ( PLOS ) journals use this model. This is referred to as ‘gold’ Open Access.

A relatively new model is 'hybrid' journals, where publishers offer the option of paying to make a particular article Open Access within an otherwise subscription journal. This does open up the question of 'double dipping' - where the publishers receive payment for both the subscription and the article processing charges. In order to address this issue, there have been several offsetting arrangements negoatiated for UK universities.

Benefits of Open Access

Open Access makes published research freely available to people without a subscription. The philosophical basis for Open Access is that publicly funded research should be publicly available. In addition, humanity is facing considerable challenges in relation to food, water, energy and transport into the future. We need the research community to work together to devise solutions, and excluding a significant number of researchers from the discussion because research output is behind paywalls does not work towards this end goal.  This image demonstrates some of the benefits of Open Access .

Related links

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• Where to find OA content
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Open Research Newsletter sign-up

Please contact us at  [email protected]   to be added to the mailing list to receive our quarterly e-Newsletter.

The Office of Scholarly Communication sends this Newsletter to its subscribers in order to disseminate information relevant to open access, research data management, scholarly communication and open research topics. For details on how the personal information you enter here is used, please see our  privacy policy . 

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Resources for My Subject

Law: theses & dissertations.

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Access to theses and dissertations from other institutions and from the University of Cambridge

This guide provides information on searching for theses of Cambridge PhDs and for theses of UK universities and universities abroad. 

For information and guidance on depositing your thesis as a cambridge phd, visit the cambridge office of scholarly communication pages on theses here ., this guide gives essential information on how to obtain theses using the british library's ethos service. .

On the last weekend of October, the British Library became the victim of a major cyber-attack. Essential digital services including the BL catalogue, website and online learning resources went dark, with research services like the EThOS collection of more than 600,000 doctoral theses suddenly unavailable. The BL state that they anticipate restoring more services in the next few weeks, but disruption to certain services is now expected to persist for several months. For the latest news on the attack and information on the restoration of services, please follow the BL blog here:  Knowledge Matters blog  and access the LibGuide page here:  British Library Outage Update - Electronic Legal Deposit - LibGuides at University of Cambridge Subject Libraries

A full list of resources for searching theses online is provided by the Cambridge A-Z, available here .

University of Cambridge theses

Finding a cambridge phd thesis online via the institutional repository.

The University's institutional repository, Apollo , holds full-text digital versions of over 11,000 Cambridge PhD theses and is a rapidly growing collection deposited by Cambridge Ph.D. graduates. Theses in Apollo can be browsed via this link . More information on how to access theses by University of Cambridge students can be found on the access to Cambridge theses webpage.   The requirement for impending PhD graduates to deposit a digital version in order to graduate means the repository will be increasing at a rate of approximately 1,000 per year from this source.   About 200 theses are added annually through requests to make theses Open Access or via requests to digitize a thesis in printed format.

Locating and obtaining a copy of a Cambridge PhD thesis (not yet available via the repository)

Theses can be searched in iDiscover .  Guidance on searching for theses in iDiscover can be found here .   Requests for consultation of printed theses, not available online, should be made at the Manuscripts Reading Room (Email:  [email protected] Telephone: +44 (0)1223 333143).   Further information on the University Library's theses, dissertations and prize essays collections can be consulted at this link .

Researchers can order a copy of an unpublished thesis which was deposited in print form either through the Library’s  Digital Content Unit via the image request form , or, if the thesis has been digitised, it may be available in the Apollo repository. Copies of theses may be provided to researchers in accordance with the  law  and in a manner that is common across UK libraries.  The law allows us to provide whole copies of unpublished theses to individuals as long as they sign a declaration saying that it is for non-commercial research or private study.

How to make your thesis available online through Cambridge's institutional repository

Are you a Cambridge alumni and wish to make your Ph.D. thesis available online? You can do this by depositing it in Apollo the University's institutional repository. Click here for further information on how to proceed.    Current Ph.D students at the University of Cambridge can find further information about the requirements to deposit theses on the Office of Scholarly Communication theses webpages.

UK Theses and Dissertations

Electronic copies of Ph.D. theses submitted at over 100 UK universities are obtainable from EThOS , a service set up to provide access to all theses from participating institutions. It achieves this by harvesting e-theses from Institutional Repositories and by digitising print theses as they are ordered by researchers using the system. Over 250,000 theses are already available in this way. Please note that it does not supply theses submitted at the universities of Cambridge or Oxford although they are listed on EThOS.

Registration with EThOS is not required to search for a thesis but is necessary to download or order one unless it is stored in the university repository rather than the British Library (in which case a link to the repository will be displayed). Many theses are available without charge on an Open Access basis but in all other cases, if you are requesting a thesis that has not yet been digitised you will be asked to meet the cost. Once a thesis has been digitised it is available for free download thereafter.

When you order a thesis it will either be immediately available for download or writing to hard copy or it will need to be digitised. If you order a thesis for digitisation, the system will manage the process and you will be informed when the thesis is available for download/preparation to hard copy.

See the Search results section of the  help page for full information on interpreting search results in EThOS.

EThOS is managed by the British Library and can be found at http://ethos.bl.uk . For more information see About EThOS .

World-wide (incl. UK) theses and dissertations

Electronic versions of non-UK theses may be available from the institution at which they were submitted, sometimes on an open access basis from the institutional repository. A good starting point for discovering freely available electronic theses and dissertations beyond the UK is the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) , which facilitates searching across institutions. Information can also usually be found on the library web pages of the relevant institution.

The DART Europe etheses portal lists several thousand full-text theses from a group of European universities.

The University Library subscribes to the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses  (PQDT) database which from August 31 2023 is accessed on the Web of Science platform.  To search this index select it from the Web of Science "Search in" drop-down list of databases (available on the Documents tab on WoS home page)

PQDT includes 2.4 million dissertation and theses citations, representing 700 leading academic institutions worldwide from 1861 to the present day. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works. Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master's theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The University Library only subscribes to the abstracting & indexing version of the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database and NOT the full text version.  A fee is payable for ordering a dissertation from this source.   To obtain the full text of a dissertation as a downloadable PDF you can submit your request via the University Library Inter-Library Loans department (see contact details below). NB this service is only available to full and current members of the University of Cambridge.

Alternatively you can pay yourself for the dissertation PDF on the PQDT platform. Link from Web of Science record display of any thesis to PQDT by clicking on "View Details on ProQuest".  On the "Preview" page you will see an option "Order a copy" top right.  This will allow you to order your own copy from ProQuest directly.

Dissertations and theses submitted at non-UK universities may also be requested on Inter-Library Loan through the Inter-Library Loans department (01223 333039 or 333080, [email protected] )

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Open Access Theses and Dissertations

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OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 1100 colleges, universities, and research institutions . OATD currently indexes 7,225,126 theses and dissertations.

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You may also want to consult these sites to search for other theses:

• Google Scholar
• NDLTD , the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. NDLTD provides information and a search engine for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), whether they are open access or not.
• Proquest Theses and Dissertations (PQDT), a database of dissertations and theses, whether they were published electronically or in print, and mostly available for purchase. Access to PQDT may be limited; consult your local library for access information.