Finding Dissertations and Theses

Each citation style has its own way of presenting the bibliographic information of a dissertation or thesis. The differences usually result from what is most important in the academic fields that use each respective style. However, the goal of each is clarity and consistency -- writers are trying to communicate to readers so they can understand where information is coming from.

Most commonly-used citation styles will identify a dissertation or thesis as such. Most style guides provide several examples to help respond to different scenarios, but citations may change depending upon where the text was retrieved and a few other variables.

MLA Style (9th ed.)

Dissertation on a digital repository:

Bugdal, Melissa. Finding their Voices: A Longitudinal Study of Student Writers from Basic Writing to Writing in the Disciplines. 2017. U Connecticut, Doctoral dissertation. Digital Commons @ UConn, digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/dissertations/1419.

Master's thesis on Proquest:

Stawicki, John M. Evolving Our Heroes: An Analysis of Founders and “Founding Fathers” in American History Dissertations. 2019. Bowling Green State U, Master's thesis. Proquest, proquest.com/dissertations-theses/evolving-our-heroes-analysis-founders-founding/docview/2357375756/se-2.

APA Style (7th ed.)

Dissertation on Proquest:

Choudhury, M. H. (2024). ETDSuite: A toolkit to mine electronic theses and dissertations to enrich scholarly big data using natural language processing and computer vision (Publication no. 31763650) [Doctoral dissertation, Old Dominion University]. Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global.

(Note: Proquest assigns each text a unique identifier called a "dissertation/thesis number" that APA suggests including in a citation.)

Dissertation on a digital repository:

Chun, S. M. (2024). Dungeons & Dragons & dissertations: A study of therapeutically applied tabletop roleplaying game groups at a university counseling center [Doctoral dissertation, Brigham Young University]. BYU ScholarsArchive. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/10571