Spotlight on theses – a rich source of free information for alumni

Theses, and the associated research data, are a good but sometimes neglected source of information:

• They are a great source of further reading on a topic.
• They can keep you up to date with what particular universities are researching.
• The full text is very often freely available in university repositories.

Access PhD theses from Cranfield

Cranfield is committed to making its research output freely available via open access.

Our research publications database, CERES, contains scanned copies of our PhD theses, as well as our peer-reviewed publications, including journal articles,  book chapters, working papers and technical reports. You can either search on a topic or by name, or you can browse. Try clicking on a School relevant to your subject area. You will find recent submissions to each School section listed on the right-hand side of the screen.

We also make CORD publicly available. This is our research data repository which contains the underlying research data used to support our publications, from spreadsheets to multimedia to code. It also holds other valuable non-peer-reviewed outputs such as white papers and video presentations of research.

Need a copy of your own Master’s thesis?

This is one of the most frequently-asked questions by alumni! Unfortunately we are not yet able to offer online access to Masters’ theses, but if you contact us at libraryalumni@cranfield.ac.uk we may be able to send you a pdf copy.

Theses from other institutions

Here are a selection of other good quality sources of theses outside Cranfield.

DART-Europe E-Theses Portal
Currently provides access to over 100,000 full text research theses from over 12 countries. Participating countries and institutions are list on the website.

EThOS – Electronic Thesis Online Service
British Library EThOS provides access to UK eTheses from participating UK Higher Education institutions. Search across 250,000+ theses for free and order the full text quickly and easily.

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
Links to the full text of theses from mainly American and Canadian universities, but increasingly includes content from other countries too.

Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD)
Graduate theses and dissertations from around the world.

OpenDOAR
A directory of academic Open Access repositories providing full text papers from universities worldwide.

Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
Access full text papers from universities worldwide.

How to access the Alumni Library Online service

Alumni Library Online gives you intstant access to thousands of top quality journal articles and the latest thinking to support your professional and personal development. It provides 11 major academic and industry databases along with links to good quality open access resources. To access ALO:

• Go to your alumni portal
• Log in with your account (see advice below if you have forgotten your login)
• Click on the down-arrow next to ‘Alumni’ – this will display the full range of alumni services
• Click on ‘Alumni Library Online’
• The homepage for ALO will then be displayed. Click on a section heading e.g. “Databases” to see what is available to you.

Our top tip for using ALO
Don’t be put off by the name of the database, thinking that it’s ‘only’ an engineering or a management database. Most of them have a surprisingly wide coverage so try searching for your chosen topic in all of them – you might be very pleasantly surprised by the results that you find!

Acceptable use of ALO
Please remember that all ALO resources are provided to alumni free of charge for personal development but are not to be used for commercial gain or shared with others.

Further help

If you have any queries about the above, or would like to send us feedback about any of our resources, please contact us: libraryalumni@cranfield.ac.uk

The ALO service is part of the alumni portal. If you have a problem with logging in to your account please contact the Alumni Office: alumni@cranfield.ac.uk

 

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