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).
EThOS aims to provide:
- A national aggregated record of all doctoral theses awarded by UK Higher Education institutions
- Free access to the full text of as many theses as possible for use by all researchers to further their own research.
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.
