Dissertations and Repository Research

Digital archives and repositories provide access to scholarship online. Repositories include dissertations and theses and are usually, but not always, open access, which means that they are free to read. Use this guide to find dissertations in library databases and online, especially if you are a graduate student in the process of writing a thesis or dissertation and wish to see examples of other work in your field of study. 

* Please keep in mind that dissertations and theses, while edited by faculty advisors, are not peer-reviewed scholarship. If you are citing a dissertation in your own research, it will not fulfill the requirement for sourcing peer-reviewed articles. Peer-review is an editorial process that requires work to meet high quality standards for official publication in a journal. 

An Institutional Repository (IR) is a type of open access archive where digital copies of student and faculty work are collected and preserved. A university repository functions as a central location where scholarship is freely accessible to the campus community and/or to the world. Many colleges and universities have some form of digital archive to showcase institutional achievements, founded on the principles of open access (OA) scholarship.

Learn more about The University of Tampa Institutional Repository (UoTIR). 

Most Universities host their own IRs. If you'd like to see examples of dissertations at a particular institution, search the university name and the phrase institutional repository. For example, a search for "USF Institutional Repository" will bring up a page linking to their Digital Commons. 

Browse the repositories above to start your research.