Robin Li and Melissa Ma Science Library
You are here
Dissertations and theses
Dissertations and theses Menu
Online format
Stanford to Accept Digital Dissertations
As of November 9, 2009, Stanford graduate students can submit their dissertations digitally. This program means less effort and expense for students and better access to the documents' content.
Full-text PDF files of Stanford dissertations from 1989 to October 2009 are available to Stanford users from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses @ Stanford University, a Digital Library of Dissertations and Theses, hosted by UMI. For online access to theses published after October 2009, please search the author's name in SearchWorks, the Stanford Libraries Catalog. Catalog records for online theses are added quarterly. Theses may be embargoed up to two years. Embargoed theses are available only to users with a SUNet ID.
Copyright and intellectual property rights issues: "Faculty need to be aware that the Office of Technology Licensing has determined that publication of a dissertation qualifies as a public disclosure per article 35 U.S.C. 102 of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (ie for purposes of patent filings). This is true for both print and electronic dissertations. It is critical that faculty and doctoral candidates work together well in advance of the candidate’s dissertation filing to ensure that timing concerns regarding publication of data are resolved. Similarly, faculty and doctoral candidates need to coordinate to ensure publication of the dissertation does not conflict with other publication agreements related to material included in the dissertation." Source: Copyright Reminder
Print format
Theses and dissertations for the Chemistry and the Chemical Engineering Departments are located in the Stanford Auxiliary Library.
Theses are searchable by author, title, primary faculty advisor, department, and year in SearchWorks.
For example, to locate theses from the Chemistry Department:
- Go to SearchWorks
- Select dissertations and theses under featured resources
- On the Simple Search form, enter “stanford chemistry department” and click on Search button
- Sorting Results: default is by relevance. Other sorting options include: Year (new to old), Year (old to new), Author, Title.
To see theses for a primary faculty advisor:
- Enter “last name, first name middle initial” of faculty member, e.g.
- Waymouth, Robert M
- Search by Author (use arrow to right of Search button)
- Sorting Results: default is by relevance. Other sorting options include: Year (new to old), Year (old to new), Author, Title.
Search Tips: To find all theses for a primary faculty advisor, view detailed display for a thesis’s record retrieved in search above and then click on link for advisor’s name.
Dissertations and theses from other institutions
Dissertation Abstracts International indexes virtually all doctoral dissertations accepted by United States and Canadian institutions since 1861. Selected masters theses are represented after 1962 with abstracts available after 1988. Some dissertations granted by universities outside of North America may be included. The file is updated monthly, though lag time from when a dissertation is accepted until its inclusion in DAI may be up to a year. DAI is available online to Stanford users through ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. Abstracts for earlier years are sometimes available in the print version Dissertation Abstracts International.
Open access dissertations and theses
There are several sites you can use to locate openly accessible dissertations and theses.
Many institutions, including Stanford University, allow Google Scholar to index online dissertations and theses. These theses are only discoverable via Google after any embargo periods have ended.
"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. Our website includes resources for university administrators, librarians, faculty, students, and the general public. Topics include how to find, create, and preserve ETDs; how to set up an ETD program; legal and technical questions; and the latest news and research in the ETD community."
"OATD aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 800 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently indexes over 1.6 million theses and dissertations." (description copied on 26 August 2013)
"PQDT Open provides the full text of open access dissertations and theses free of charge. The authors of these dissertations and theses have opted to publish as open access and make their research available for free on the open Web. Open Access Publishing is a new service offered by ProQuest Dissertation Publishing, and we expect to have many more open access dissertations and theses over time."