Open Access Dissertations and Articles: Home

It is becoming an increasingly common practice for researchers to share their preprints because it allows them to disseminate their research results quickly and openly with the rest of the world. As a result, there is a growing number of preprint-specific and generalist repositories that support the sharing of preprints. This directory provides a list of preprint repositories that are available to the research community. It helps researchers find the most appropriate platform for them, enabling them to browse through existing repositories by discipline, location, language, functionalities, and other facets.

EThOS is the UK’s national thesis service which aims to maximise the visibility and availability of the UK’s doctoral research theses. It demonstrates the quality of UK research, and supports the UK Government’s open access principle that publications resulting from publicly-funded research should be made freely available for all researchers, providing opportunities for further research. EThOS helps institutions to meet the expectation of the UK Research Councils that PhDs supported by a Research Council Training Grant should be made freely available in an open access repository, as indicated in its Training Grant Terms & Conditions (Paragraph 104). There are approximately 500,000 records relating to theses awarded by over 120 institutions. Around 260,000 of these also provide access to the full text thesis, either via download from the EThOS database or via links to the institution’s own repository. Of the remaining 220,000 records dating back to at least 1800, three quarters are available to be ordered for scanning through the EThOS digitisation-on-demand facility.

OATD.org 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 1100 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently indexes 6,452,908 theses and dissertations.

The aim of ROAR is to promote the development of open access by providing timely information about the growth and status of repositories throughout the world. Open access to research maximises research access and thereby also research impact, making research more productive and effective.