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It is crucial for graduate students to search the thesis and dissertation literature to make sure that an idea or hypothesis has not already been tested, explored, and published. An additional reason to search this literature is that it is rich with ideas and information not found elsewhere. If graduate students do not continue on as academics or if students that came after them in their programs did not continue their research, this literature may be the end of the line for scholarship on a topic.
ProQuest has published dissertation e-learning modules covering the usefulness of using dissertations as a research source. See link below:
All graduate students should, at minimum, search the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global database (PQDT) to see if the research they are proposing to do has already been done by a student at another institution/university. RIT dissertations and theses have been included in PQDT since approximately 2006.
Each month ProQuest updates this list of the top 25 Most-Accessed Dissertations and Theses across all subjects, based upon total PDF downloads. Find out what is trending.
The web sites below should also be consulted as appropriate to perform a full and thorough review of the dissertation and thesis literature beyond your introductory search of ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. Consider whether a particular country or part of the world would have an interest in your potential research topic.
Only large-scale repositories of dissertations and theses are included here. You may also need to search individual university repositories directly.
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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Within dissertations and theses is a wealth of scholarship, yet it is often overlooked because most go unpublished.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
Disseminating graduate works since 1939, and is the largest editorially curated repository of dissertations and theses.
A multi-disciplinary collection of over 5 million citations and 3 million full text works.
The database increases in size by 250,000 works each year.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global is used by over 4 million researchers at 3,100+ institutions around the world.
Find database content updates, popular training, troubleshooting and how-to resources
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ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Global provides visibility of cutting-edge research from the world’s premier universities.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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
Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.
Published on June 7, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on November 21, 2023.
A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical early steps in your writing process . It helps you to lay out and organize your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding the specifics of your dissertation topic and showcasing its relevance to your field.
Generally, an outline contains information on the different sections included in your thesis or dissertation , such as:
In the final product, you can also provide a chapter outline for your readers. This is a short paragraph at the end of your introduction to inform readers about the organizational structure of your thesis or dissertation. This chapter outline is also known as a reading guide or summary outline.
How to outline your thesis or dissertation, dissertation and thesis outline templates, chapter outline example, sample sentences for your chapter outline, sample verbs for variation in your chapter outline, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis and dissertation outlines.
While there are some inter-institutional differences, many outlines proceed in a fairly similar fashion.
For a more detailed overview of chapters and other elements, be sure to check out our article on the structure of a dissertation or download our template .
To help you get started, we’ve created a full thesis or dissertation template in Word or Google Docs format. It’s easy adapt it to your own requirements.
Download Word template Download Google Docs template
It can be easy to fall into a pattern of overusing the same words or sentence constructions, which can make your work monotonous and repetitive for your readers. Consider utilizing some of the alternative constructions presented below.
The passive voice is a common choice for outlines and overviews because the context makes it clear who is carrying out the action (e.g., you are conducting the research ). However, overuse of the passive voice can make your text vague and imprecise.
You can also present your information using the “IS-AV” (inanimate subject with an active verb ) construction.
A chapter is an inanimate object, so it is not capable of taking an action itself (e.g., presenting or discussing). However, the meaning of the sentence is still easily understandable, so the IS-AV construction can be a good way to add variety to your text.
Another option is to use the “I” construction, which is often recommended by style manuals (e.g., APA Style and Chicago style ). However, depending on your field of study, this construction is not always considered professional or academic. Ask your supervisor if you’re not sure.
To truly make the most of these options, consider mixing and matching the passive voice , IS-AV construction , and “I” construction .This can help the flow of your argument and improve the readability of your text.
As you draft the chapter outline, you may also find yourself frequently repeating the same words, such as “discuss,” “present,” “prove,” or “show.” Consider branching out to add richness and nuance to your writing. Here are some examples of synonyms you can use.
Address | Describe | Imply | Refute |
Argue | Determine | Indicate | Report |
Claim | Emphasize | Mention | Reveal |
Clarify | Examine | Point out | Speculate |
Compare | Explain | Posit | Summarize |
Concern | Formulate | Present | Target |
Counter | Focus on | Propose | Treat |
Define | Give | Provide insight into | Underpin |
Demonstrate | Highlight | Recommend | Use |
If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!
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When you mention different chapters within your text, it’s considered best to use Roman numerals for most citation styles. However, the most important thing here is to remain consistent whenever using numbers in your dissertation .
The title page of your thesis or dissertation goes first, before all other content or lists that you may choose to include.
A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical first steps in your writing process. It helps you to lay out and organize your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding what kind of research you’d like to undertake.
If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.
George, T. (2023, November 21). Dissertation & Thesis Outline | Example & Free Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved September 3, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/dissertation-thesis-outline/
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Advanced research and scholarship. Theses and dissertations, free to find, free to use. 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.
Provides free access to thousands of dissertation and thesis abstracts from universities around the world, and links to full text when freely available. PQDT Open Proquest's portal to their Dissertations and Theses that are freely available on the web. See the database Dissertations and Theses for more options subscribed to by CSULB.
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. Content Includes: 1,500,000 electronic theses and dissertations. 320 worldwide universities that have loaded their ...
Open Access Theses and Dissertations. Database of free, open access full-text graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Direct Link. University of Southern California. 3550 Trousdale Parkway. Los Angeles, CA 90089. Database of free, open access full-text graduate theses and dissertations published around the world.
Freely accessible to the public via the Internet. Subjects: Dissertations and Theses. Watson Library. 1425 Jayhawk Blvd. Lawrence, KS 66045. Contact Us. 785-864-8983. Libraries website feedback.
UK theses and dissertations from EThOS. The Electronic Theses Online System (EThOS) offers free access to the full text of UK theses. EThOS offers a one stop online shop providing free access to UK theses. EThOS digitizes theses on request into PDF format, this may require payment. EThOS is managed by the British Library in partnership with a ...
About. With EBSCO Open Dissertations, institutions and students are offered an innovative approach to driving additional traffic to ETDs in institutional repositories. Our goal is to help make their students' theses and dissertations as widely visible and cited as possible. This approach extends the work started in 2014, when EBSCO and the H ...
Global ETD Search. Search the 6,506,877 electronic theses and dissertations contained in the NDLTD archive:
Dissertations of Universities. ETDs: Virginia Tech Electronic Theses and Dissertations Digital Library and Archives allows searching for citations and abstracts of over 6,700 theses and dissertations. Free full-text access is provided for over 4,500 of these items. M.I.T. Theses Contains selected theses and dissertations from all MIT departments.
The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) is an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination, and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). We support electronic publishing and open access to scholarship in order to enhance the sharing of knowledge worldwide.
The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work.
Open Access Repositories. A free resource, hosted by EBSCO, this database includes more than 172,000 theses and dissertations in total from 1902 to the present. EThOS is the UK's national thesis service. EThOS aims to hold a record for all doctoral theses awarded by all UK universities (institutions).
Over the last 80 years, ProQuest has built the world's most comprehensive and renowned dissertations program. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (PQDT Global), continues to grow its repository of 5 million graduate works each year, thanks to the continued contribution from the world's universities, creating an ever-growing resource of emerging research to fuel innovation and new insights.
EBSCO provides free research databases for students, researchers and librarians. Learn how to access these free academic databases today. ... 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 ...
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. ... NDLTD - Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations provides free online access to a over a million theses and dissertations from all over ...
Started by Virginia Tech, the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) is a searchable global database of almost 4 million electronic theses and dissertations from the NDLTD archive. Browse electronic theses and dissertations from over 30 participating colleges and universities in the state of Ohio.
Most post-1990 titles are available in full text. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global indexes dissertations and masters' theses from most North American graduate schools as well as some European universities. It provides full text for most indexed dissertations from 1990 to present. Search Dissertations & Theses. Giving to the Library.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) is an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination, and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). NDLTD is the biggest consortium worldwide for online dissertations. The DART-Europe partners help to provide researchers ...
The Harvard University Archives' collection of theses, dissertations, and prize papers document the wide range of academic research undertaken by Harvard students over the course of the University's history.. Beyond their value as pieces of original research, these collections document the history of American higher education, chronicling both the growth of Harvard as a major research ...
The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), is an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination, and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). The NDLTD Union Catalog contains more than one million records of electronic theses and dissertations.
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.
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Dissertation & Thesis Outline | Example & Free Templates. Published on June 7, 2022 by Tegan George.Revised on November 21, 2023. A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical early steps in your writing process.It helps you to lay out and organize your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding the specifics of your dissertation topic and showcasing its relevance to ...