Why search for Nursing & Midwifery ETDs?
- ETDs present robust and unique research that is conducted in universities all around the world. The electronic publishing of theses in an open access environment means that a vast freely available resource is now available to nurse practitioners and scholars.
- Check existing theses on your research topic
When embarking on a Masters or Doctoral thesis, it is good practice to do a thorough search both locally and internationally to determine whether other theses have already been published on your research topic.
Where can I start searching?
- A good place to start is your own institution’s library catalogue. Theses written by your institution’s Masters and PhD students will be indexed in your library catalogue and you can examine them not only in relation to content, but also to determine best practice in terms of layout, referencing and so on. These records will generally be linked to your institution’s institutional repository which will provide full text access whenever possible with the exception of institutional restrictions and/or embargoed content. See below Is free access to Nursing theses available? for further information.
- You can next search in your own country’s national thesis portal. This will be useful to discover examples typical of your own country’s regulations. See examples on the National Portals page. If you would like to expand your search there are many international theses’ portals where you can conduct a comprehensive search and discover what has already of been done internationally. See examples on the International Portals page.
How to limit my search to find Nursing theses?
Generally there are two modes of searching – basic and advanced. Basic search allows you to search for your research topic e.g. breastfeeding or emergency care but the options for building a more robust search strategy and further refining the search are limited.
Advanced search allows many more options to refine, such as the ability to enter multiple search terms e.g. emergency care AND paramedicine. You can further refine by date, language and country and in some instances by electronic availability and open access status.
In an open access portal such as BASE http://www.base-search.net/about/en/ or Trove you can select Advanced Search to narrow by document type or format ‘Thesis’.
Is free access to Nursing theses available?
The resources listed below are for the most part provided through open access and hence are freely available. However, restrictions can be placed on theses access due to publisher restrictions (published journal articles contained in the thesis), commercially sensitive information, sensitive personal information and restrictive policies by institutions. The restriction might apply to the entire thesis or only to one or more sections of it and may apply for a limited period or indefinitely. More information can be found here.
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