Finding theses
This page introduces how to find theses from Edinburgh Napier University and other UK institutions.
For Edinburgh Napier University, you may be able to access PhD, DBA and research-based (not taught) Masters theses. We do not hold copies of undergraduate dissertations within the libraries or online.
Find an Edinburgh Napier University thesis
Find a thesis online
To find a list of available theses, go to LibrarySearch:
- Search for 'napier thesis'.
- On the right hand side, under Tweak my Results> Format, click on Show more > Theses > Apply Filters to limit your search.
- This will give you a list of thousands of theses (and some other Edinburgh Napier-related items).
If you want to find a thesis on a particular subject, search as above and add your subject keywords. Be aware that thesis subjects are very specific, so you may have to keep trying different keywords.
You can find recent PhD, DBA and research-based (not taught) Masters theses online in the Edinburgh Napier Research Repository.
You'll find the historical range of Edinburgh Napier PhD theses stored in hardcopy in secure storage at Merchiston Library. See below.
Find a hardcopy thesis
Hardcopy theses (from before 2020) are stored in Merchiston Library, and listed on LibrarySearch.
To find a list of hardcopy theses only, go to LibrarySearch:
- Search for 'napier thesis'.
- On the right hand side, under Tweak my Results> Library/Local Collection, click on Merchiston to limit your search.
This will give you a list of hundreds of theses (and some other Edinburgh Napier-related items).
If you want to find a thesis on a particular subject, search as above but add your subject keywords. Be aware that thesis subjects are very specific, so you may have to keep trying different keywords.
To borrow a hardcopy thesis
Ask at the helpdesk in Merchiston Library. Library staff will ask you to fill out a short form, and then bring you the thesis from secure storage.
Note that you can only borrow a thesis for three hours at a time (some theses are embargoed and cannot be borrowed). You cannot take it out of the Library or photocopy it.
Find a UK thesis from another institution
The British Library was subject to a cyber incident in October 2023 and most of their systems have been offline since then. This outage includes access to EThOS, the service that provides access to the full text of theses stored by the British Library.
You can search the British Library main catalogue to find details of theses while the EThOS catalogue is unavailable. If available, a link to the university repository where the thesis can be found should also appear in the item's record.
You can also search for records of theses held on EThOS via Edinburgh Napier University LibrarySearch by searching for the title or subject and using the 'Theses' filter from the 'Tweak my results' panel on the right-hand side of the search page. Once you find the details of the thesis you are looking for, you can then search the web to find the university where the thesis might be kept in a repository.
Other repositories
If you are looking for repositories from other universities, the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) is an international database tracking the location and growth of open access institutional repositories.