exeter thesis repository

Theses: Home

Find full text theses from  the University of Exeter, the UK and around the world.

What is a thesis?

They consist of substantial primary research in specialised topics and provide very detailed data and analysis. They may be so specialised that they provide information that is unavailable elsewhere and their bibliographies can be a useful source of wider reading on a topic. They are extremely valuable sources of information.

Before you begin your research, it is important to discover what else has been written on your topic.

When starting doctoral research, it is crucial to establish that the specific research that you intend to do has not already been carried out. You will therefore need to look at previous theses in your field of study, both at the University of Exeter and elsewhere.

Finding University of Exeter Doctoral theses

• University of Exeter theses
• Theses awarded before 2010
• Theses awarded after 2010
• Search for all University of Exeter theses

You can access theses produced by University of Exeter students.

Access routes depend upon whether the item is a print copy (deposited before 2010) or a digital copy (deposited after 2010).

Please note: The library and ORE holds doctoral/PHD theses only. We do not hold Masters or undergraduate dissertations.

No scanning until eThOs service returns

We are currently unable to scan pre 2010 theses.  Once the British Library eThOs service resumes requests to have pre-2010 theses scanned will be possible.  Until then pre-2010 theses will have to be consulted in the library.

Theses awarded before 2010

Print theses are kept in secure storage rather than open shelves and need to be requested in advance.  All theses are library use only and may not be removed from the library.

Search for theses using Library Search

fully qualified domain name such as "encore.mylibrary.com" --> Search by  Author ,  Title  or  Author /Title .

• To browse theses on a particular subject, carry out a  keyword search  for your subject, and include the words  'University '  and  'Exeter'  as keywords.   ( Please note however, that although this is likely to retrieve mainly theses, it will also find other University of Exeter publications on your subject). 
• Request theses in advance using the  Request It  button and choose  Forum Library  as the pickup location. 
• You will receive an email when the thesis is ready to use. 

Theses awarded since 2010

All theses submitted since 2010 are in  Open Research Exeter (ORE) , the online institutional repository. A small collection of theses have been deposited in ORE before this date.

Searching for all University of Exeter theses (using ETHOS)

University of Exeter theses can be found by searching online in  EThOS  , which is the UK’s national thesis service.   You need to create an account. 

Choose Advanced search and change the search option to Awarding body. Type University of Exeter in the search box.  Tip: You may want to limit the search to items available for immediate download.

Finding theses in the UK and worldwide

• Find UK theses
• Find international theses
• Additional sources for International theses
• Ethos This link opens in a new window EThOS provides details of doctoral theses from over 120 UK institutions. Some theses are available as full text downloads. Others can be requested as scanned documents via the digitisation-on-demand service, which requires registration. 

NB  Unfortunately the eThOs service is currently suspended due to the British Library being hacked.

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window Index and full text access to dissertations and theses from the UK and around the world, spanning from 1743 to the present day.

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window

This collection holds dissertations and theses from 1861 to the present, from over 700 worldwide academic institutions.

Some full-text dissertations are available for download, especially those added since 1997. Others are available for purchase as print copies.

More than 70,000 new full-text dissertations and theses are added to the database each year.

Comprehensive details on how to search this database can be found here.

• EBSCO Open Dissertations Search thousands of open-access dissertations.
• OpenDOAR This link opens in a new window A directory of academic open access repositories including access to a wide range of international theses.

The following websites will help you locate international theses:

• Dart-Europe E-Theses The DART-Europe E-theses Portal provides access to over 690,500 open access research theses from 594 universities in 28 European countries, including France, Germany, Spain and Sweden.
• Trove Australian theses are searchable via the National Library of Australia’s Trove service (a repository of resources relating to Australia).

Click here for guidance on how to search for  theses within this collection.

• WorldCat This link opens in a new window This database provides access to the records of dissertations and theses available in OCLC member libraries, most of which are North American. Many of the records link directly to the full-text theses.

Undergraduate and Masters dissertations

The library has not collected UoE undergraduate and Masters level dissertations historically.  There are a few education dissertations that can be searched for on the library catalogue.

Some departments, such as Psychology, have retained their own collection of dissertations.  However, most departments have not retained copies.  Please ask at the Hub info point for your subject to see if the Department has retained a collection of dissertations.   https://www.exeter.ac.uk/students/infopoints/

• Last Updated: Sep 25, 2024 4:36 PM
• URL: https://libguides.exeter.ac.uk/theses

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Open Access for Postgraduate Researchers

• Examination of Thesis/Dissertation
• Nomination of Examiners
• Submission of Thesis/Dissertation
• Award and Graduation

What is open access?

Open access is the free, immediate, online availability of research publications, coupled with rights to reuse them fully in the digital environment. Publications that are open access can be read and downloaded by anybody with an internet connection, anywhere in the world. They have a licence applied such as a Creative Commons licence e.g. CC BY , which gives “explicit and advance” permission for reuse, subject to proper credit being given to the author. By increasing readership, open access can increase visibility, impact and citations of your work and can help to raise your research profile.

Open access policies

All University of Exeter postgraduate research (PGR) students must make their thesis/dissertation, research papers and research data available as open access in the institutional repository Open Research Exeter (ORE). Read the open access and research data management policy for PGR students for more information. PGR students are also covered by the Institutional Rights Retention policy .

If you receive external funding, you should also be aware of your funder’s open access requirements . Check funder policies using SHERPA Open Policy Finder .

How to make your work open access

You can make many versions of your work open access, including:

• Post the pre-peer-review version on a preprint server, before submitting to a journal.
• Deposit your accepted manuscript in an institutional or subject repository. Also referred to as "green" open access, or self-archiving . Upload via Symplectic to the institutional repository ORE .
• Publish the final full text open access on the publisher website. Also referred to as "gold" open access , there may be a fee to pay.

Contact Open Research for support to make your publications open access; visit the Open Research webpages for more information. Contact the PG Admin team with questions about open access and your thesis.

All PGR students are expected (where possible) to deposit data that has been selected for retention into an appropriate University, national, or international data service or domain repository.

Any type of file can be deposited into the University's institutional repository, ORE. If your work includes images, sound, or movie files which are separate from the text of your thesis/dissertation, you are encouraged to deposit these as supplementary files.

Published research papers should include a short data access statement describing how, and on what terms, any supporting research data may be accessed. All data deposited to ORE will be allocated a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI), and this DOI should be included in the data access statement.

To ensure that the DOI for the data can be included in the associated research paper, the data should be deposited to ORE upon acceptance of the research paper.

For information on how to create, organise, and preserve your research data please see the Research Data Management pages. If you have any queries, please contact [email protected] .

• University home
• For business
• Alumni and supporters
• Our departments
• Visiting us

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Embargo Periods

Open Access for Postgraduate Researchers

• Examination of Thesis/Dissertation
• Nomination of Examiners
• Submission of Thesis/Dissertation
• Award and Graduation

What is open access?

Open access is the free, immediate, online availability of research publications, coupled with rights to reuse them fully in the digital environment. Publications that are open access can be read and downloaded by anybody with an internet connection, anywhere in the world. They have a licence applied such as a Creative Commons licence e.g. CC BY , which gives “explicit and advance” permission for reuse, subject to proper credit being given to the author. By increasing readership, open access can increase visibility, impact and citations of your work and can help to raise your research profile.

Open access policies

All University of Exeter postgraduate research (PGR) students must make their thesis/dissertation, research papers and research data available as open access in the institutional repository Open Research Exeter (ORE). Read the open access and research data management policy for PGR students for more information. PGR students are also covered by the Institutional Rights Retention policy .

If you receive external funding, you should also be aware of your funder’s open access requirements . Check funder policies using SHERPA Open Policy Finder .

How to make your work open access

You can make many versions of your work open access, including:

• Post the pre-peer-review version on a preprint server, before submitting to a journal.
• Deposit your accepted manuscript in an institutional or subject repository. Also referred to as "green" open access, or self-archiving . Upload via Symplectic to the institutional repository ORE .
• Publish the final full text open access on the publisher website. Also referred to as "gold" open access , there may be a fee to pay.

Contact Open Research for support to make your publications open access; visit the Open Research webpages for more information. Contact the PG Admin team with questions about open access and your thesis.

All PGR students are expected (where possible) to deposit data that has been selected for retention into an appropriate University, national, or international data service or domain repository.

Any type of file can be deposited into the University's institutional repository, ORE. If your work includes images, sound, or movie files which are separate from the text of your thesis/dissertation, you are encouraged to deposit these as supplementary files.

Published research papers should include a short data access statement describing how, and on what terms, any supporting research data may be accessed. All data deposited to ORE will be allocated a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI), and this DOI should be included in the data access statement.

To ensure that the DOI for the data can be included in the associated research paper, the data should be deposited to ORE upon acceptance of the research paper.

For information on how to create, organise, and preserve your research data please see the Research Data Management pages. If you have any queries, please contact [email protected] .

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Doctoral College

Doctoral theses, social enterprise partnerships: exploring the experience of partnership for social enterprises in the uk.

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Doctoral theses, adapting the theatrical frame in online performance during the covid-19 pandemic.

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