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Finding Theses and Dissertations

This guide includes information about how to locate print and electronic theses or dissertations produced by students at Queen’s as well as those produced by students at other institutions, both in Canada and overseas.

Welcome!

A theses or dissertation is an extended body of research produced by students for a higher degree such as a Masters or PhD, or an extended essay undertaken as part of an undergraduate program of study.

This guide includes information about how to locate print and electronic theses or dissertations produced by students at Queen’s as well as those produced by students at other institutions, both in Canada and overseas.

Useful websites to locate graduate theses

Many universities now make graduate theses available to the world via search engines like Google.   This page provides a list of online repositories and search tools to locate theses, both completed and in-progress.

Also see the links on the top left for additional resources to locate Queen's theses as well as those produced at other Canadian and International Institutions. 

OpenDOAR - Directory of Open Access Repositories: OpenDOAR is a global directory of University repositories including theses, research articles and other open access research.

PQDT Open: PQDT Open provides the full text of open access dissertations and theses.   Locate dissertations and theses relevant to your discipline, and view the complete text in PDF format.

OpenThesis: a free repository of theses, dissertations, and other academic documents.

PhdData.org: maintained by a small community of graduate students, PhdData.org is a free index of doctoral dissertations in-progress.  Indexing of theses in this index is entirely voluntary and therefore coverage is patchy.

Thesis Commons: a new, cloud-based, open-source platform for the submission, dissemination, and discovery of graduate and undergraduate theses and dissertations from any discipline.  Launched in August 2017 by The Center for Open Science (COS), it is currently a small collection.

Tip:

TIP: In instances where an individual student or faculty member has requested access to a copy of a thesis or dissertation from another university, either purchased by the Library, or purchased by an individual student or faculty member and later donated to the library collection, the item may be available in OMNI the Library Catalogue.