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Dissertations and theses are substantial scholarly sources, and they are easier to cite than their reputation suggests. Almost everything you need is on the repository or database record. Here's how to put it together.
Published vs. Unpublished
APA Style draws the line by availability, not by commercial publication: a dissertation or thesis "is considered published when it is available from a database" such as ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global or PQDT Open, "an institutional repository, or an archive."
Everything else — typically a single bound copy held in the awarding university's library — is unpublished. The format changes accordingly.
Quick Reference by Major Style
APA (7th Edition):
Published in a database:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of dissertation (Publication No. xxx) [Doctoral dissertation, University Name]. Database Name.
APA's own published examples:
Kabir, J. M. (2016). Factors influencing customer satisfaction at a fast food hamburger chain: The relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (Publication No. 10169573) [Doctoral dissertation, Wilmington University]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Miranda, C. (2019). Exploring the lived experiences of foster youth who obtained graduate level degrees: Self-efficacy, resilience, and the impact on identity development (Publication No. 27542827) [Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University]. PQDT Open. https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/2309521814.html?FMT=AI
APA's rule for the two cases: include the URL when it will resolve for your readers (the Miranda example); end with the database name when the database requires a login (the Kabir example).
From an institutional repository:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of dissertation [Doctoral dissertation, University Name]. Repository Name. URL
An open-access example, verified against the DOI registry:
Lienart, G.-D. H. (2016). Effects of temperature and food availability on the antipredator behaviour of juvenile coral reef fishes [PhD thesis, James Cook University]. ResearchOnline@JCU. https://doi.org/10.25903/znpk-2734
Unpublished:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of dissertation [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University Name.
APA's own published example of an unpublished dissertation:
Harris, L. (2014). Instructional leadership perceptions and practices of elementary school leaders [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Virginia.
And James Cook University Library's APA guide gives a master's-level equivalent:
Hawkins, E. J. (1999). Artist and model: Shaping the creative process [Unpublished master's thesis]. James Cook University.
MLA (9th Edition):
MLA assembles the entry from its core elements — author, title of source, publication date, publisher (here the awarding institution), and location:
Author. Title of Dissertation. Year. University Name, PhD dissertation. Repository or database, URL.
Applied to the verified thesis above:
Lienart, Govinda-Das Hugo. Effects of Temperature and Food Availability on the Antipredator Behaviour of Juvenile Coral Reef Fishes. 2016. James Cook University, PhD thesis. ResearchOnline@JCU, doi.org/10.25903/znpk-2734.
Chicago (18th Edition, Notes–Bibliography):
Chicago's Citation Quick Guide publishes this example, which shows where the ProQuest number goes:
Note:
- Yuna Blajer de la Garza, "A House Is Not a Home: Citizenship and Belonging in Contemporary Democracies" (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2019), 66–67, ProQuest (13865986).
Shortened note:
- Blajer de la Garza, "House," 93.
Bibliography:
Blajer de la Garza, Yuna. "A House Is Not a Home: Citizenship and Belonging in Contemporary Democracies." PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2019. ProQuest (13865986).
Note the difference from APA and MLA: Chicago puts the dissertation title in quotation marks, not italics.
Master's Theses
Same structure, different bracketed label. APA says the bracketed description is "Doctoral dissertation" or "Master's thesis" followed by a comma and the awarding institution, and that "the same format can be adapted for other published theses, including undergraduate theses, by changing the wording of the bracketed description as appropriate (e.g., 'Undergraduate honors thesis')."
Author, A. A. (Year). Title [Master's thesis, University Name]. Repository Name. URL
If the institution names a specific degree (MA, MS, MFA, M.Appl.Psy.), repositories often use that wording, and it is safe to copy it.
Finding Publication Numbers
ProQuest assigns publication numbers to the theses it holds. The number appears on the database record and often in the URL. APA's rule is conditional: "If the database assigns publication numbers to dissertations and theses, include the publication number in parentheses after the title of the dissertation or thesis without italics." Not every record has one — omit it when it doesn't.
Institutional Repositories
Many universities make theses freely available, often with a DOI, which is the most stable thing you can cite:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title [Doctoral dissertation, University Name]. Repository Name. https://doi.org/[DOI]
Use the record's persistent link — a DOI or handle — not a search-results URL. APA's repository example does exactly this:
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
Citing a Dissertation You Read in Print
If you read a physical copy in the awarding university's library and the thesis is not in any database, repository or archive, it is unpublished:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University Name.
Dissertations in Other Languages
Cite the thesis in the language of the original, and — if your style requires it — give a translation of the title in square brackets after it. Use the repository record for the exact title, degree wording and institution name. Where the original uses a non-Latin script, check whether your style or your department expects a transliteration.
[Author, A. A.]. ([Year]). [Title in the original language] [[Title translated into English]] [Doctoral dissertation, [University Name]]. [Repository Name]. [URL]
What If It's Not Yet Complete?
Citing a dissertation in progress is unusual, and neither APA's nor Chicago's published examples cover it, because an unfinished thesis is not a recoverable source. If you learned something from a draft or from the candidate directly, APA treats that as a personal communication — cited in the text only, with the person's initials and surname and as exact a date as possible:
([Initial.] [Surname], personal communication, [Month Day, Year])
Ask the candidate first; people often do not want unfinished work cited.
Dissertations vs. Published Books
Some dissertations are later revised into books. Cite the version you actually used:
- If you read the dissertation, cite the dissertation.
- If you read the book, cite the book.
- If the argument changed materially between them and that matters to your point, reference both and say why.
Citing Specific Chapters and Pages
Dissertations are long, so a pinpoint helps:
In-text (APA): (Lienart, 2016, p. 34) or (Lienart, 2016, Chapter 3)
Chicago puts the pinpoint in the note, as in the Blajer de la Garza example above ("66–67").
Dissertation Abstracts
Don't cite only the abstract. An abstract is a summary written to be searchable; citing it in place of the full text is like citing an article you never opened. Most repository theses are a single free PDF away.
If you genuinely cannot get the full text, say so in your text rather than implying you read it. Citing sources you can't fully access sets out how to do that honestly.
If the dissertation is your own and you are reusing work from it in a later paper, that is a citation too, not a formality: see citing yourself.
Where These Rules Come From
- APA: the "Published Dissertation or Thesis References" and "Unpublished Dissertation or Thesis References" pages on the APA Style site (
apastyle.apa.org), both citing Publication Manual Section 10.6. APA's site refuses automated requests, so the published-dissertation page was read through an Internet Archive proxy capture and the unpublished-dissertation page from a dated Internet Archive capture (22 May 2026); the Kabir, Miranda, Zambrano-Vazquez and Harris examples and every quoted APA sentence come from those captures. - APA, corroborated: Murdoch University Library's APA 7th guide (
libguides.murdoch.edu.au/APA/theses), which sets out unpublished, published, from-a-database and from-a-repository formats, and James Cook University Library's APA guide (libguides.jcu.edu.au/apa/theses), which supplies the Hawkins example. Both read live. - MLA: the MLA Style Center's template of core elements (
style.mla.org). - Chicago: the free Chicago Manual of Style 18th-edition Citation Quick Guide, "Thesis or dissertation" (CMOS 14.113), read live — the Blajer de la Garza note, shortened note and bibliography entry are quoted from it.
- The Lienart example was checked against the DataCite record for DOI 10.25903/znpk-2734 (creator "Lienart, Govinda-Das Hugo", 2016, James Cook University, resource type Thesis) and against the ResearchOnline@JCU record at
researchonline.jcu.edu.au/47533/, which describes it as a "PhD thesis, James Cook University".
Full style rules: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE.
The citation generator has a thesis type, with a "Thesis or document type" field for the kind of work and a "University" field for the awarding institution. Fill both from the repository record rather than from memory: that wording is exactly what the styles above arrange differently.
