university of york thesis repository

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

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To submit an Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD), visit the Faculty of Graduate Studies' How to Submit page.

Please contact the Faculty of Graduate Studies directly with any questions regarding ETDs.

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White Rose Libraries

The libraries of the universities of leeds, sheffield and york, repositories.

White Rose Libraries share the UK’s only collaboratively managed institutional repositories, providing access to full-text research and theses from scholars of the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York through shared infrastructure.

White Rose Research Online (established in 2004) and White Rose Etheses Online (added in 2007) together form one of the most highly-used institutional repository services in the UK, with over 18 million downloads of full-text articles and doctoral theses.

Strategic direction for the repositories comes from the WRL Repositories Board. An Operational team, chaired by the WRL Executive Manager and consisting of key colleagues from across the three sites, manages the development and operation of the repositories service. Technical support and development is provided by John Salter, the dedicated WRL Technical Officer based at the University of Leeds- where the service is hosted. This structure brings efficiencies in terms of costs and adds value in increasing the knowledge and expertise available, while ensuring the collaborative operated service still reflects individual institutional policies and so provides an institutional repository for each University in the truest sense.

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Computer Science

Online Theses and Reports Library

Professor Nick Pears

Deputy Head of Department (Research)

[email protected]

Thesis and Dissertation

Forms for Research Ethics approval and for Thesis and Dissertations are available on the FGS Forms page .

Connect with FGS

Traduction Française Indisponible

Repository platforms.

A strategic priority for York University Libraries is the stewardship of York’s research assets, with a focus on the active selection, storage, preservation, and sharing of its collections.

The following platforms support our mandate to preserve the record of knowledge and embrace digital forms, whether the holdings are digitized or born digital. While the focus of the York University Digital Library is to preserve and showcase our research holdings, YorkSpace supports the dissemination of York University research outputs.

YorkSpace YorkSpace is the Institutional Repository for York University. YorkSpace hosts a variety of scholarly outputs including faculty papers, award winning student papers, Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), and conference proceedings. YorkSpace also hosts primary research materials from the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections including photographs from the Toronto Telegram and the sheet music from the John Arpin fonds. Our sheet music collection is featured in the Sheet Music Consortium , hosted by UCLA.

• Learn more about hosting content in YorkSpace

York University Digital Library YUDL is York Universities preservation repository, created to ensure long-term access to a critical mass of materials of significance to our community. YUDL emphasizes Canadian heritage and scholarship, knowledge produced by York researchers, and unique library and archival holdings from our collections.

• More about YUDL

Open Access Theses and Dissertations

Thursday, April 18, 8:20am (EDT): Searching is temporarily offline. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to bring searching back up as quickly as possible.

Advanced research and scholarship. Theses and dissertations, free to find, free to use.

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Browse by author name (“Author name starts with…”).

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October 3, 2022. OATD is dealing with a number of misbehaved crawlers and robots, and is currently taking some steps to minimize their impact on the system. This may require you to click through some security screen. Our apologies for any inconvenience.

Recent Additions

See all of this week’s new additions.

About OATD.org

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 7,213,579 theses and dissertations.

About OATD (our FAQ) .

Visual OATD.org

We’re happy to present several data visualizations to give an overall sense of the OATD.org collection by county of publication, language, and field of study.

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.

• University Libraries
• Research Guides
• Dissertations & Theses: Guide to Research

Finding UB Dissertations and Theses

Dissertations & theses: guide to research: finding ub dissertations and theses.

• Identifying Dissertations and Theses
• Obtaining Dissertations and Theses
• Information for UB Theses Authors

To borrow a UB dissertation or thesis from our collection, do an author or title search in the UB Libraries Catalog to get a library location and call number.

By Department To find or browse dissertations or theses by department conduct a keyword search in the Library Catalog , search by department name You may also choose to include the year to limit your search.

Example Search:

Dissertation  (in any field)

American Studies (in any field)

Thesis (in any field)

Media Study (in any field)

Dissertations & Theses @ SUNY Buffalo - this database provides title, author, and subject access to University at Buffalo dissertations submitted to ProQuest's Dissertations & Theses database. You can search by department as well.

• << Previous: Identifying Dissertations and Theses
• Next: Obtaining Dissertations and Theses >>

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The ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (PQDT) ™ database is the world's most comprehensive curated collection of multi-disciplinary dissertations and theses from around the world, offering over 5 million citations and 3 million full-text works from thousands of universities.

Within dissertations and theses is a wealth of scholarship, yet it is often overlooked because most go unpublished. Uncover new ideas and innovations with more confidence and efficiency. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global delivers a focused path for researchers by tapping into a global network of connected research.

Dissertation references can be a treasure trove for obscure topics, here students discover shorter works like articles.

Scott Dennis, Librarian Core Electronic Resources, University of Michigan

Connecting Global Scholarship

Disseminating since 1939

Disseminating graduate works since 1939, and is the largest editorially curated repository of dissertations and theses.

5+ million works

A multi-disciplinary collection of over 5 million citations and 3 million full text works.

250,000 Annually

The database increases in size by 250,000 works each year.

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ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global is used by over 4 million researchers at 3,100+ institutions around the world.

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Short Description

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Global provides visibility of cutting-edge research from the world’s premier universities.

ProQuest’s vast collection of >5.5million post graduate dissertations and theses now discoverable on Web of Science

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global with the Web of Science™ enables researchers to seamlessly uncover early career, post-graduate research in the form of more than 5.5 million dissertations and theses from over 4,100 institutions from more than 60 countries, alongside journal articles, conference proceedings, research data, books, preprints and patents.

The integration and introduction of the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Citation Index , eliminates the need for researchers to search multiple databases, allowing them to streamline their workflow and focus more on their academic success and research advancements.

To further enhance accessibility, direct full text linking from the Web of Science to the ProQuest platform is available for joint subscribers of the Web of Science and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Navigating ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Citation Index

DISCOVER unique scholarship

• Provides credible research on unique, niche, and trending topics, often not published elsewhere
• Provides access to global and diverse perspectives, helping to close diversity gaps in mainstream publishing channels
• Removes friction and obstacles from the research process by making full text available in one location
• Retrieves equitable search results, which places equal value on quality scholarship no matter where it is from

UNCOVER the value of dissertations

• Introduces users to new source types
• Reaches more students, helps more users in a virtual environment
• Addresses user needs immediately when they need it
• Nurtures career aspirations in academia

FOCUS your research path

Citation Connections are the next step in the evolution of the ProQuest Platform, moving the recommender functionality beyond standard keyword lists towards technology that leverages citation data, bibliometrics, and knowledge graph technology. Focus your research path by finding the most relevant and influential works faster.

• Supports researchers to become more efficient and effective.
• Leads researchers of all levels quickly to the most relevant, credible sources.
• Provides a focused path to building comprehensive foundational knowledge in any research area.
• Integrates with other library resources, enhances the value of other ProQuest subscriptions by providing insights into how the research is connected.

Success Story

Progressing STEM Studies with a Critical Primary Research Source

Author, Technologist, and Doctoral Student, Ida Joiner shares her story on leveraging dissertations to engage with current trends, cite a comprehensive foundation and build towards her own research goals.

Avoiding Bias by Starting at the Source

Dr. Terri D. Pigott, Ph.D., of the School of Public Health at the College of Education, Georgia State University, on Avoiding Bias by Starting at the Source.

Testimonials

Professor Terri Pigott Ph.D. discusses the expectations she presents to her students on meta-analysis and unbiased research requirements and how the use of ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global helps to ensure that comprehensive data sets are included in new research outputs.

Using Dissertations as a Primary Source

Student researcher and published author Ida Joiner discusses how she uses ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global as a core resource that helps her to build towards her own research goals.

Improving Diversity in Curriculum by Uncovering Unheard Voices

Psychology Professors and Research Scientists come together to build a course and write a supplemental text for Psychology curriculum emphasizing the dissertations by women of color prior to 1980, filling research gaps in the early history of psychology.

The Erasure of Drag Contribution in Performance History

Dr. Lady J, Ph.D., documents the historical impact, influence, contributions that drag performers have made to politics, music, film, fashion, and popular culture in her dissertation. Her goal is to document and make this history available for broad educational outreach.

Text and Data Mining Projects

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global is one of the most requested data-sets for text and data mining because of its broad historic to present-day coverage and deep and comprehensive data results found in the full-text records.  TDM Studio can be used alongside PQDT to easily and efficiently extract data and analyze it. See the list below for articles and projects published by scholars who used ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global data:

• TDM Studio ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global Case Studies
• Mapping Research Trends with ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (Univ. North Carolina)
• Indiana University using Dissertations Data for Research
• ProQuest Dissertation Database Provides Critical Information for Research Projects Across the US
• City University of New York

Trends in the Evolution of Research and Doctoral Education

Bruce A. Weinberg, Ph.D., Professor of Economics and Public Affairs from The Ohio State University shares how text and data mining of ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global allows researchers to understand doctoral career trajectory patterns.

Improving Graduate Student Outcomes

Dr. Jearl (Ken) Helvey, Assistant Professor of Education – Doctoral Program at Texas Wesleyan University on how incorporating dissertations into the curriculum improved the doctoral student success at Texas Wesleyan University.

Related Products

Empower researchers to uncover new connections and make new discoveries using TDM Studio, a new solution for text and data mining (TDM). From the initial idea to the final output, TDM Studio puts the power of text and data mining directly in the researcher’s hands.

ProQuest One Academic brings together four core multi-disciplinary products, allowing access to the world’s largest curated collection of journals, ebooks, dissertations, news and video.

Including dissertations and theses in ProQuest means amplifying your research by making it available in a unified repository

Theses and Dissertations

Cornell theses.

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.).

Non-Cornell Theses

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 .

Additional Resources

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

Research Data York

Research Data York is a data repository for research undertaken at the University of York. The service aims to facilitate data discovery and data sharing.

Research Data York is a good option for archiving and sharing your datasets openly, unless there is a discipline-specific repository which is commonly used in your field or your funder requires otherwise.

• Read more about choosing a data repository (Research data management: a practical guide)
• Watch the Research Data York for postgraduate researchers video to learn more (Google Drive)

Using Research Data York

Before data deposit.

Check the   terms of service to ensure you can meet your responsibilities and that you understand how the data will be handled and curated. By default, research data deposited with Research Data York is made openly available to all under a CC BY licence.

• Read more about a CC BY licence (Creative Commons for researchers: a practical guide)

At data deposit

Record information (metadata) about your dataset in PURE and upload your data files.

• Log in to  PURE
• Click the   + Add conten t button and click   Dataset   in the left-hand menu to open a new dataset record template.
• Complete all relevant metadata fields in the template following the guidance in the PURE User Guide for recording and depositing research datasets in PURE (York wiki)
• Upload all relevant data files and set the required visibility, licence and access options.
• Set the status of the record to Entry completed by User   and save the record.

Postgraduate researchers do not have PURE accounts and should therefore ask their supervisor or a York co-author to add a dataset record on their behalf.

After data deposit

Library staff will review the metadata you have provided, to ensure that secondary users will be able to understand the dataset. If it complies with minimum metadata requirements, a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) will be minted and the record validated.

• Read more about Digital Object Identifiers (DataCite)

After validation

The dataset record and data is discoverable through the   York Research Database , subject to any applied embargo or access restrictions. 

Open Research team Email [email protected] or book an online appointment

Related links

• Research Data York terms of service

Research Data York cannot accommodate all research data

Discussion of your plans before deposit.

If you plan to deposit data that is anonymised, sensitive or large - and/or you have identified reasons to restrict access to the data - you must discuss your plans with the Open Research team early in the research process, and at least 60 working days before any deadline.

Sufficiently anonymised (once personal) data

There are specific requirements that need to be met for the deposit and sharing of sufficiently anonymised (once personal) data.

Some funders will require data deposit in specific data repositories. For example, ESRC grant holders should offer their data to the UK Data Service , while NERC grant holders should offer their data to the most appropriate NERC data centre . Check your funder’s data policy .

Otherwise, it is up to you to choose the most appropriate repository for your data - typically a recognised data repository for your discipline if one exists. re3data.org can help you find 'trustworthy' data repositories that meet a minimum standard.

Postgraduate researchers are encouraged to share research data from their PhD research, on the condition that:

• the research process is not damaged by premature and/or inappropriate release of research data
• the research data has been generated in accordance with the University’s   research policies and codes of practice , and in accordance with the policies of research funders

If you are in receipt of external funding, your funder may require you to make your research data available once the project has ended - as long as there are no ethical or legal reasons that prohibit data sharing. Check your funder’s data policy.

In general, it is advised that supervisors are always consulted before any research data underpinning PhD research is shared. 

Postgraduate researchers can deposit and share datasets via Research Data York. Postgraduate researchers do not have PURE accounts, so you will need to ask your supervisor (or a York co-author) to add a dataset record and upload your dataset(s) to PURE on your behalf. 

If you intend to deposit with Research Data York, you and your supervisor must check the   terms of service   to ensure you can meet your responsibilities, i.e. that you won’t share data that should not be shared, and that you understand how the data will be handled and curated.

If you are - collecting data from research participants; using material still under copyright; extracting data from commercial databases; obtaining data under licence; collecting data from archives for personal research purposes only; using commercially sensitive data; using confidential data (e.g. NHS data) - you may not be able to deposit and share the data. Contact the Open Research team for further assistance.

Research Data York is intended for research data underpinning published research or which is otherwise of value.

Research Data York is not intended for:

• research data still in active use by research projects (live data)
• research data created exclusively outside of the University of York
• research data that is confidential or sensitive (unless sufficiently anonymised)
• closed research data, i.e. data that it’s not possible to share
• research data that is already deposited elsewhere, e.g. in another data repository or archive
• everything you have.

By default, research data deposited with Research Data York is made openly available to anyone under a   CC BY licence. A CC BY licence allows datasets to be reused for any purpose under the condition that users cite the data they have reused, maximising the impact of shared research data and the potential number of citations.

The public facing portal ( The York Research Database ) allows these datasets to be searched and downloaded.

• Example dataset: Dataset for "Strong anthropogenic control of Isoprene SOA"

You can apply an embargo period to the research data you deposit with Research Data York. Follow the guidance in the PURE User Guide on research data that requires an embargo .

If you are in receipt of external funding, you should check your   funder’s data policy. Funders may have different rules on when datasets have to be made available. If you are unsure, you should contact your funder directly.

If you plan to deposit data with Research Data York and you have identified reasons to restrict access, you must discuss these with the Open Research team   early in the research process, and at least 60 working days before any deadline.   Research Data York cannot accommodate all access restrictions.

• Read more about restricting access to data

When a request for access is received by Research Data York, it is sent on to the named contact (typically the data creator/supervisor) for a decision on access. Responsibility is transferred to the Head of Department when a named contact has left the University. The individual will consider:

• Factors to take into account when making a decision on access (Google Doc)

Native Google files (e.g. Google Docs and Google Sheets) will need to be downloaded into different file formats before deposit with Research Data York. You should ensure that the file format chosen adequately and accurately captures the content of the item, e.g. that calculated values in spreadsheets are retained or comments within documents captured.

You may be able to deposit and share the research data you have obtained from people with Research Data York, on the condition that the data is sufficiently anonymised and you can meet the specific requirements listed for depositing and sharing of sufficiently anonymised personal data .

You must also discuss your plans with the Open Research team early in the research process and long before you come to deposit such data with Research Data York.

Please note: The specific requirements cannot be met by postgraduate researchers (PGRs). As such, Research Data York is not an option for postgraduate researchers with (once) sensitive data.

Anonymising data to protect the identities of individuals is one of the strategies that can be used to enable the safe sharing of data. Anonymising research data can be time-consuming and costly so early planning is essential.

Research Data York is not intended for closed research data, i.e. data that it’s not possible to share. In these cases, you should contact   IT Services   for advice on data storage options.

• IT Services

You can upload your data files (unless files are sensitive/personal) in PURE. Multiple files can be packaged (e.g. into a .zip, .tar, .rar file) before upload. The upload limit in PURE is 20GB per file. We recommend using Google Chrome when uploading files as other browsers have upload restrictions.

If you need to upload files which are larger than 20GB and cannot obey the file limit without splitting your data into a large number of files you should email the Open Research team and we will help you to transfer the data outside of PURE.

Research Data York may not be able to accommodate very large datasets. If you plan to deposit data with Research Data York and your dataset is very large you must discuss this with the Open Research team early in the research process, and at least 60 working days before any deadline.

Library staff will review the dataset record you have created in PURE and if the metadata complies with minimum metadata requirements, a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) will be sent to you and the record validated. You will be able to add the DOI to your publication data access statements.

• Read more about data access statements

If your research data will support published research findings you should add a data access statement to your publication to link the publication to your data. This is good scholarly practice and is also a requirement of many   funders. You may wish to use something along the lines of:

The data supporting this research is openly available from the University of York data repository at [ insert DOI ]

The following convention can be used if you or someone else refers to your data elsewhere:

Authors [ creators of the data ]. Publication Year. Dataset Title [format and/or medium]. Publisher/Repository. DOI/Link to data.

• Read more about data access statements and data citation

If you have deposited your dataset(s) in an external data repository, all the University requires is a dataset record in PURE (the University's Research Information System).

Email the  Open Research team   with the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for the dataset and the DOI for the related paper, and library staff will create a dataset record in PURE for you, based on the one in the external repository. Your PURE record and your researcher profile will then automatically update. Please note this is a pilot service.

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