A dissertation or thesis is cited much like a book, with one extra fact: the degree it was written for and the university that awarded it. That fact is where thesis references go wrong, because the record a student copies from often leaves it out.
This guide, published by EdCitation, shows how to cite a dissertation or thesis in the six styles EdCitation builds: APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard (Cite Them Right), IEEE and Vancouver. Every rule was read on 26 September 2026 at the style's publisher, or at a university guide where the publisher's pages are closed. It belongs to our guide to how to write a dissertation; for citing, a thesis and a dissertation are the same kind of source, whatever the university calls them.
Give EdCitation's free Cite a source a thesis's DOI and it builds the entry from the registered record. Thesis records are often thin, so the sections below say what to add by hand.
What does a dissertation or thesis reference need?
Five facts: the author, the year, the title, the degree with its university, and where a reader can find the thesis.
| Style | Title | Degree and university | Where to find it | In the text |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| APA 7 | Italics, sentence case | [Doctoral dissertation, University] | Database or repository, then DOI or URL | (Hollett, 2024) |
| MLA 9 | Italics, title case | After the year: Oxford U, DPhil thesis | Database in italics, then URL or DOI | (Hollett 112) |
| Chicago 18 author-date | Quotation marks, title case | PhD diss., University | Database and its number, or DOI | (Hollett 2024, 112) |
| Harvard | Italics, sentence case | PhD thesis. University. | DOI, or Available at: URL (Accessed: date) | (Hollett, 2024) |
| IEEE | Quotation marks, sentence case | Ph.D. dissertation, Dept., Univ., City, Country | [Online]. Available: URL | [1] |
| Vancouver | Plain, sentence case | [dissertation], university as publisher | Available from: URL | (1) or a superscript |
Published, in a repository, or print only
The American Psychological Association (2020a) counts a thesis as published when it sits in a database such as ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, an institutional repository or an archive. A copy that exists only on paper at the university is unpublished. APA and Harvard word the two cases differently; MLA no longer separates them.
How do I cite a dissertation in APA 7?
Author, year, title in italics, any publication number, then in square brackets "Doctoral dissertation" or "Master's thesis", a comma and the university, then the database or repository, and a URL if it works for readers. American Psychological Association (2020a) gives this repository example:
Zambrano-Vazquez, L. (2016). The interaction of state and trait worry on response monitoring in those with worry and obsessive-compulsive symptoms [Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona]. UA Campus Repository. https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/620615
- ProQuest. The publication number goes in parentheses, not in italics, after the title: (Publication No. 10169573). A URL that needs a login is left out, and the entry ends with ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
- Other degrees. Change the bracketed words, for example "Undergraduate honors thesis".
- A DOI. The dissertation page shows none, but APA's general rule holds: a work with a DOI takes it, and the DOI replaces any URL (American Psychological Association, 2022).
An unpublished thesis in APA
"[Unpublished doctoral dissertation]" or "[Unpublished master's thesis]" follows the title, and the university ends the entry (American Psychological Association, 2020b):
Harris, L. (2014). Instructional leadership perceptions and practices of elementary school leaders [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Virginia.
Adams (2025), on APA's blog, adds that a thesis archived online, in ProQuest for instance, is not unpublished. In the text: (Harris, 2014) or Harris (2014).
How do I cite a dissertation in MLA 9?
The author, the title and the date are MLA's core elements; the university and a description of the work follow the year as optional elements (Modern Language Association, 2016):
Njus, Jesse. Performing the Passion: A Study on the Nature of Medieval Acting. 2010. Northwestern U, PhD dissertation.
A database follows as a second container, in italics, with its URL. Use the words on the title page: a British doctoral thesis may be a "PhD thesis" or, at Oxford, a "DPhil thesis" (Modern Language Association, 2020). A DOI sits in the location slot as a link beginning https://doi.org/ (Modern Language Association, 2018).
Those Style Center posts were written for the eighth edition; the ninth edition's handbook is not free to read. The University of Auckland (2026) guide to MLA 9 keeps the same pattern. In the text: (Njus 45).
How do I cite a thesis in Chicago 18 author-date?
The title goes in quotation marks, then "PhD diss." and the university, then the database with the dissertation's number in parentheses. The University of Chicago Press (n.d.) gives:
Blajer de la Garza, Yuna. 2019. "A House Is Not a Home: Citizenship and Belonging in Contemporary Democracies." PhD diss., University of Chicago. ProQuest (13865986).
In the text: (Blajer de la Garza 2019, 66–67). The rule itself, CMOS 14.113, is behind a subscription, so two things could not be confirmed: the form for a print-only thesis, and whether a thesis its university calls a "PhD thesis" keeps that word. EdCitation builds Chicago in the author-date system only.
How do I cite a thesis in Harvard, Cite Them Right version?
Author, year, title in italics, the kind of thesis, the university, then the DOI or "Available at:" with the URL and the date accessed. Cite Them Right's own site needs a login, so these rules come from university guides that follow it. The University of the West of Scotland (2026), on the 13th edition:
Shiva, M. (2018) Socio-economic consequences of climate change. PhD thesis. University of Dundee. Available at: https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/socio-economic-consequences-of-climate-change (Accessed: 27 April 2020).
A thesis available only in print counts as unpublished, and "Unpublished" goes before the kind of thesis (South East Technological University Libraries, 2026):
Hickey, S. (2008) Managing the expatriate process. Unpublished MBSi thesis. SETU, Waterford Campus.
The UWS guide ends a work with a DOI on the bare https://doi.org/ link, with no accessed date. EdCitation's Harvard follows the 12th edition, which writes "Available at:" before a DOI; delete those words if your university follows the 13th.
How do I cite a thesis in IEEE and Vancouver?
IEEE
IEEE (2025) gives the author, the title in quotation marks, "M.S. thesis" or "Ph.D. dissertation", the abbreviated department and university, the city, state and country, and the year; online, "[Online]. Available:" and the URL follow.
J. O. Williams, "Narrow-band analyzer," Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. Elect. Eng., Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, USA, 1993.
The guide tells writers to keep the author's own word, thesis or dissertation, rather than choose one by degree level. In the text the thesis is a number: [1].
Vancouver
The National Library of Medicine (2015a) cites a thesis like a book: "[dissertation]" or "[master's thesis]" after the title, the university's city as the place and the university as the publisher. A city the thesis does not print goes in square brackets:
Jones DL. The role of physical activity on the need for revision total knee arthroplasty in individuals with osteoarthritis of the knee [dissertation]. [Pittsburgh (PA)]: University of Pittsburgh; 2001. 436 p.
Citing Medicine keeps "dissertation" for a doctorate and "thesis" for a master's degree, whatever the country's usage. Online, the label becomes "[dissertation on the Internet]", with the date cited and the URL; a DOI follows as a note (National Library of Medicine, 2015b).
One thesis cited in all six styles
Mark Hollett's doctoral thesis (Hollett, 2024) is a good test, because its records disagree on the year. The title page says September 2024 and Doctor of Philosophy; Crossref's record holds 2024 as the date the degree was approved; the repository's page is dated February 2025, the deposit. The year is 2024.
APA 7
Hollett, M. (2024). Fighting the choke: The impact of mixed martial arts on homelessness recovery [Doctoral dissertation, Sheffield Hallam University]. Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive. https://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00675
MLA 9
Hollett, Mark. Fighting the Choke: The Impact of Mixed Martial Arts on Homelessness Recovery. 2024. Sheffield Hallam U, PhD thesis. Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive, https://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00675.
Chicago 18 author-date
Hollett, Mark. 2024. "Fighting the Choke: The Impact of Mixed Martial Arts on Homelessness Recovery." PhD diss., Sheffield Hallam University. https://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00675.
Harvard, Cite Them Right 13th edition
Hollett, M. (2024) Fighting the choke: the impact of mixed martial arts on homelessness recovery. PhD thesis. Sheffield Hallam University. https://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00675
IEEE
M. Hollett, "Fighting the choke: The impact of mixed martial arts on homelessness recovery," Ph.D. thesis, Sheffield Hallam Univ., Sheffield, U.K., 2024. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00675
Vancouver
Hollett M. Fighting the choke: the impact of mixed martial arts on homelessness recovery [dissertation on the Internet]. Sheffield (England): Sheffield Hallam University; 2024 [cited 2026 Sep 26]. Available from: https://shura.shu.ac.uk/34873/ doi: 10.7190/shu-thesis-00675
The title page names no department, so the IEEE entry has none.
What if the record lacks the degree type or the university?
Take both from the title page, which Citing Medicine calls the chief source (National Library of Medicine, 2015a); repository pages often list both when the DOI record does not. Two real records show the gap:
- Cambridge. The University of Cambridge's repository registers its theses with DataCite. The record for Flaminia Bartolini's thesis names the repository as publisher and calls the work a "Thesis", with no degree; the repository page says PhD in Archaeology. The APA brackets must read [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge].
- American University. A 2026 dissertation's DataCite record names ProQuest as publisher and no university; the repository page names American University as degree grantor, at doctoral level.
Never infer the degree from the length or from a later job title. If neither the thesis nor the repository says, ask the university library.
Which year?
Citing Medicine's rule is the year the degree was granted, and the title page usually shows it. Registry dates may be a deposit or an issue date: Bartolini's DataCite record gives 2019 as the publication year and July 2020 as the issue date.
Should I cite the thesis or the journal article published from it?
Cite the one you read, because they are different works. American Psychological Association (n.d.) says turning a thesis into an article often cuts a document of more than 100 pages to about a third, so a table or a finding in the thesis may not be in the article. APA's blog prefers the peer-reviewed version of record in general (Adams, 2025). Our view: if the article says what you need, cite the article; if you used a chapter or data only the thesis has, cite the thesis; if both, cite each as its own work. A thesis later published as a book is cited as a book. To see whether a thesis became an article, search the author's name and a few title words in Find sources.
How EdCitation builds and checks a thesis reference
Cite a source is the best tool to start a thesis reference with, because it looks a thesis up in the record behind its DOI and never writes the reference: where the record is silent about the degree, it leaves the gap rather than guessing one, as the runs below show. It is free, with no account. What it printed on 26 and 27 September 2026, word for word:
- A Crossref DOI (10.7190/shu-thesis-00675). APA: Hollett, M. (2024). Fighting the choke: The impact of mixed martial arts on homelessness recovery [Doctoral dissertation, Sheffield Hallam University]. https://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00675. The year is the record's approval date and the degree its "PhD"; the title, deposited in title case, is set in sentence case, as APA 7 asks.
- A DataCite DOI (10.17863/cam.55071). APA: Bartolini, F. (2020). The story we tell our-selves: Renegotiating Fascist Heritage in post-dictatorial Italy [University of Cambridge]. https://doi.org/10.17863/cam.55071. The record names the university but no degree, so add "Doctoral dissertation," inside the brackets from the repository page, lower "Heritage", and check the year against the title page.
- A repository page by URL (https://shura.shu.ac.uk/34873/). The page names the thesis's DOI, so the entry was built from the DOI's record and matched the first one above. Arizona's repository address, the one in APA's own example, could not be read.
Find sources has a "Dissertation or thesis" filter. A search for mixed martial arts homelessness with it found 3,278 works; Hollett's thesis (2024) came first, then Assessment of Cognitive Performance in Mixed Martial Arts Athletes (2014). Bartolini's DataCite-registered thesis did not appear for its own title words: search the university's repository too.
Verify references was given three entries. The Hollett entry above came back verified: "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches." Bartolini's with 2016 came back "check this": "The DOI and title are right, but the work was published in 2020, not 2016." An invented Leeds doctorate came back not found. Given 2019, the Hollett entry came back "check this" too, with the approved year, 2024.
With Pro, $8 a month, References from a file checks a whole dissertation's list and matches every citation to it; Pricing has the plans. Managing dissertation references covers the rest of the list.
Quick questions
How do I cite a dissertation from ProQuest?
In APA 7, give the publication number in parentheses after the title, the degree and university in square brackets, and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, with a URL only if it opens without a login.
Is a thesis in a university repository published or unpublished?
Published, for APA: a thesis in a database, an institutional repository or an archive counts as published, and only a print-only copy is unpublished. MLA makes no distinction.
Does a thesis have a DOI?
Many do. Crossref's API listed 1,092,276 records typed as dissertations, and DataCite's 880,152, on 26 September 2026 (Crossref, n.d.; DataCite, n.d.). EdCitation's Cite a source builds the entry from that DOI, free.
Should I write thesis or dissertation?
In MLA and IEEE, the word on the title page. APA's brackets say "Doctoral dissertation" or "Master's thesis", and Vancouver keeps "dissertation" for doctorates and "thesis" for master's work.
References
- Adams, A. (2025, August 7). How to cite unpublished works. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/cite-unpublished-works
- American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Adapting a dissertation or thesis into a journal article. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/research-publication/dissertation-thesis
- American Psychological Association. (2020a). Published dissertation or thesis references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/published-dissertation-references
- American Psychological Association. (2020b). Unpublished dissertation or thesis references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/unpublished-dissertation-references
- American Psychological Association. (2022). DOIs and URLs. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/dois-urls
- Crossref. (n.d.). Works of type dissertation [Data set]. Crossref REST API. Retrieved 26 September 2026, from https://api.crossref.org/works?filter=type:dissertation&rows=0
- DataCite. (n.d.). DOIs of resource type dissertation [Data set]. DataCite REST API. Retrieved 26 September 2026, from https://api.datacite.org/dois?resource-type-id=dissertation
- Hollett, M. (2024). Fighting the choke: The impact of mixed martial arts on homelessness recovery [Doctoral dissertation, Sheffield Hallam University]. Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive. https://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00675
- IEEE. (2025). IEEE reference guide (Version 3.28.2025). IEEE Author Center. https://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/wp-content/uploads/IEEE-Reference-Guide.pdf
- Modern Language Association. (2016). How do I cite a dissertation in MLA style? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/citing-dissertations/
- Modern Language Association. (2018). If I want to include a DOI for a book chapter in my works-cited-list entry, where should I insert it? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/doi-for-a-book-chapter/
- Modern Language Association. (2020). Should a project labeled "thesis" that is submitted for a doctoral degree in the United Kingdom be referred to as a PhD thesis or a PhD dissertation in my works-cited list? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/united-kingdom-doctoral-thesis/
- National Library of Medicine. (2015a). Dissertations and theses. In Citing medicine: The NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers (2nd ed.). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7267/
- National Library of Medicine. (2015b). Books and other individual titles on the Internet. In Citing medicine: The NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers (2nd ed.). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7269/
- South East Technological University Libraries. (2026). Theses. Harvard referencing: Cite Them Right. https://setu.libguides.com/c.php?g=629615&p=5339472
- University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services. (2026). Thesis or dissertation. MLA 9th. https://auckland.libguides.com/mla/thesis-dissertation
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.). Author-date: Sample citations. The Chicago Manual of Style Online. Retrieved 26 September 2026, from https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html
- University of the West of Scotland Library. (2026). Cite Them Right Harvard referencing examples. https://uws-uk.libguides.com/c.php?g=727692&p=5297185