Bibliographic database of electronic PhD, MD and DProf theses provided by the British Library
E-Theses Online Service (EThOS) is a
bibliographic database and
union catalogue of electronic
theses provided by the
British Library , the
National Library of the
United Kingdom .
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4] As of February 2022
[update] EThOS provides access to over 500,000
doctoral theses awarded by over 140 UK
higher education institutions,
[5] with around 3,000 new thesis records added every month.
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
EThOS services
Stephen Hawking 's highly viewed
[11] 1966 thesis Properties of expanding universes is indexed by EThOS.
[12]
Nobel laureate
Dorothy Hodgkin 's 1937 thesis X-ray crystallography and the chemistry of the sterols
[13] is indexed by EThOS
Brian May 's 2008 thesis A survey of radial velocities in the zodiacal dust cloud
[14] is indexed by EThOS.
Germaine Greer 's 1968 thesis The ethic of love and marriage in Shakespeare's early comedies is indexed by EThOS.
[15]
Brian Cox 's 1998 thesis Double diffraction dissociation at large momentum transfer
[16] is indexed by EThOS.
EThOS records thesis data and
metadata which can then be searched with basic
[4] and advanced search terms.
[17]
Data recorded in EThOS
Theses indexed by EThOS have a minimum of a thesis title, author, awarding body and date. Optional additional metadata may be included such as the
thesis abstract ,
doctoral advisor , sponsor, cross links to other databases and the full text of the thesis itself.
[17]
As of September 2017
[update] the EThOS website gives
open access to the
full text of around 160,000 UK doctoral theses that have been
digitised . Theses can be accessed by freely registering for then logging into EThOS. Open access is also provided by links to the
Institutional repository of the awarding body. Since 2015,
[7] EThOS has integrated
authority control and other
unique identifiers including:
Some thesis records include the name of the
doctoral advisor .
Doctoral advisor metadata can be used in
academic genealogies like academictree.org,
[18]
[19]
Wikidata
[20]
[21] and the
Mathematics Genealogy Project . Academic genealogies in Wikidata are built using the doctoral advisor relation (
Property:P184 ).
[20]
Searching EThOS metadata
Where present, metadata can be used as search criteria. So for example, in addition to a basic search,
[4] an advanced search facility allows users to search for theses by publication year, awarding body, author's
given name ,
surname , thesis title, doctoral advisor and various other metadata.
[17] Data in EThOS can also be accessed programmatically (by machines) using the
Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH) from the
Open Archives Initiative (OAI),
[22]
DataCite
[23] and its
Application Programming Interface (API) .
[24]
Types of thesis included
As well as indexing
Doctor of Philosophy theses, EThOS holds records of other kinds of
doctorates including:
Master's degree theses such as
Master of Philosophy (MPhil),
Master of Research (MRes),
Master of Science (MSc) and
Master of Arts (MA) theses are not indexed by EThoS.
Honorary degrees are also not included as there is usually no actual written thesis.
Development and contact
EThOS was developed in partnership with Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) around the UK with funding from
Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and
Jisc (formerly the Joint Information Systems Committee) and was launched in January 2009.
[1]
[33] EThOS staff at the British Library can be contacted during office hours on email,
Twitter
[34] and in person at the British Library.
Availability
EThOS was affected by the
British Library cyberattack of October 2023, and remained offline in December of that year.
[35]
References
^
a
b
c Troman, Anthony; Jacobs, Neil; Copeland, Susan (2007). "A new electronic service for UK theses: access transformed by EThOS". Interlending & Document Supply . 35 (3): 157–163.
doi :
10.1108/02641610710780836 .
ISSN
0264-1615 .
^ Gould, Sara (2016).
"UK theses and the British Library EThOS service: from supply on demand to repository linking" . Interlending & Document Supply . 44 (1): 7–13.
doi :
10.1108/ILDS-10-2015-0033 .
ISSN
0264-1615 .
^ Gould, Sara (6 June 2017).
"UK theses and the British Library EThOS service: from supply on demand to repository linking" . Zenodo .
doi :
10.5281/zenodo.803351 .
^
a
b
c Anon (2009).
"British Library EThOS e-theses online service" . ethos.bl.uk . Archived from
the original on 2009-01-24.
^ Anon (2017).
"Higher Education Institutions Participating in EThOS" . bl.uk . Archived from
the original on 2012-02-24.
^ Anon (2014).
Using PhD theses in research: EThOS on
YouTube
^
a
b Anon (2017).
"About EThOS" . bl.uk . Archived from
the original on 2016-03-21.
^ Anon (2017).
"EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service)" . le.ac.uk .
University of Leicester . Archived from
the original on 2020-08-05. Retrieved 2017-11-07 .
^ Anon (2017).
"Requesting UK Doctoral Theses" . bbk.ac.uk .
Birkbeck, University of London . Archived from
the original on 2016-07-14. Retrieved 2017-11-07 .
^ Anon (2017).
"EThOS Toolkit: A guide to using and participating in EThOS" . ethostoolkit.cranfield.ac.uk .
Cranfield University . Archived from
the original on 2017-08-23.
^ Anon (2017).
"Professor Stephen Hawking's PhD viewed two million times" . bbc.co.uk . London:
BBC News .
^ Hawking, Stephen William (1966).
Properties of Expanding Universes . repository.cam.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge.
doi :
10.17863/CAM.11283 .
OCLC
62793673 .
EThOS
uk.bl.ethos.601153 .
^ Hodgkin, Dorothy Mary Crowfoot (1937).
X-ray crystallography and the chemistry of the sterols . lib.cam.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge.
EThOS
uk.bl.ethos.727110 .
^
Brian Harold May (2007).
A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud (PDF) .
Imperial College London .
doi :
10.1007/978-0-387-77706-1 .
hdl :
10044/1/1333 .
ISBN
978-0-387-77706-1 .
OCLC
754716941 .
OL
37141356M .
Wikidata
Q28971627 .
^ Greer, Germaine (1968).
The Ethic of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare's Early Comedies . ethos.bl.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge.
doi :
10.17863/CAM.567 .
OCLC
221288543 .
Copac
34899608 .
^ Cox, Brian Edward (1998).
Double diffraction dissociation at large momentum transfer (PDF) . desy.de (PhD thesis).
University of Manchester .
OCLC
644443338 .
EThOS
uk.bl.ethos.675409 .
^
a
b
c Anon (2017).
"British Library EThOS: Advanced Search" . ethos.bl.uk .
^ Anon (2017).
"The Academic Family Tree" . academictree.org . Archived from
the original on 2017-06-08.
^ Amaral, Luís A. Nunes; David, Stephen V.; Hayden, Benjamin Y. (2012).
"Neurotree: A Collaborative, Graphical Database of the Academic Genealogy of Neuroscience" .
PLoS ONE . 7 (10): e46608.
Bibcode :
2012PLoSO...746608D .
doi :
10.1371/journal.pone.0046608 .
ISSN
1932-6203 .
PMC
3465338 .
PMID
23071595 .
^
a
b Poulter, Martin (2017).
"A step forward in the sharing of open data about theses" . bodleian.ox.ac.uk . Oxford:
Bodleian Library .
Archived from the original on 2019-10-30.
^ Vrandečić, Denny; Krötzsch, Markus (2014).
"Wikidata: a free collaborative knowledgebase" .
Communications of the ACM . 57 (10): 78–85.
doi :
10.1145/2629489 .
ISSN
0001-0782 .
^ Anon (2017).
"Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about EThOS" . bl.uk . Archived from
the original on 2017-02-26.
^ Anon (2017).
"DataCite search: British Library PhD theses" . datacite.org .
^ Anon (2017).
"DataCite REST API: A common API to get all metadata from DataCite" . api.datacite.org .
^ Wu, Pensée (2009).
Muscular dystrophy cell therapy : an in utero approach using human fetal mesenchymal stem cells . ethos.bl.uk (MD thesis).
Imperial College London .
hdl :
10044/1/4726 .
OCLC
930655636 . Archived from
the original on 2020-08-05. Retrieved 2017-11-07 .
^ Bartels, Else Marie (1990).
Studies of the physiological states of cross-striated muscle with the aim of understanding the underlying processes of the changes from one state to another . ethos.bl.uk (DSc thesis).
Open University .
OCLC
53556783 .
^ Dighton, Chris (2020).
Aspects of Bonded Composite Assemblies for Aerospace Applications . ethos.bl.uk (EngD thesis).
University of Surrey .
^ Georgiou, Andreas K. (2010).
Corporate governance and its effect on the performance on family and non-family companies listed on the Cyprus stock exchange . ethos.bl.uk (DProf thesis).
Middlesex University .
OCLC
840721110 . Archived from
the original on 2018-06-12. Retrieved 2017-11-07 .
^ Aguilar Lopez, Evaristo (2006).
DMA Portfolio 'Rhythms of the Huasteca' . ethos.bl.uk (Doctor of Musical Arts thesis).
University of Salford . Archived from
the original on 2020-08-06. Retrieved 2017-11-07 .
^ Greaves, Mary (2011).
Practitioner research : a journey in optimistic disappointment? . ethos.bl.uk (DEd thesis).
Manchester Metropolitan University .
OCLC
757137107 . Archived from
the original on 2022-12-09. Retrieved 2017-11-07 .
^ Steward, Jill (2008).
The development of tourist culture and the formation of social and cultural identities 1800-1914, with particular reference to Central Europe . ethos.bl.uk (PhD thesis).
Northumbria University .
OCLC
757146249 . Archived from
the original on 2018-06-12. Retrieved 2017-11-07 .
^ O'Reilly, Sally Anne (2012).
Dark Aemilia and inventing Shakespeare . ethos.bl.uk (PhD thesis).
Brunel University London . Archived from
the original on 2018-06-12. Retrieved 2017-11-07 .
^
"JISCMail" . www.jiscmail.ac.uk . Retrieved 2018-03-15 .
^
E-Theses Online Service on
X
^
"Scholars 'stumble through' as British Library tools stay offline" . Times Higher Education (THE) . 2023-12-04. Retrieved 2024-03-03 .