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Winter Closure

Multiple Danforth campus libraries will be closed and inaccessible to patrons from December 21 until January 2. Read on for more details. 

Institutional Repository Support

Open Scholarship is the institutional repository for Washington University in St. Louis. Maintained by the Scholarly Communication & Digital Publishing Services Department within the WashU Libraries, it provides free and open access to the scholarly and creative output of faculty, staff, and students by gathering it in one place.

Open Scholarship is intended for scholarly work authored by Washington University in St. Louis faculty, staff, researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students. The focus is on larger collections of material, such as electronic theses and dissertations, undergraduate honors theses, conference posters, and white papers and reports.

For more information about Open Scholarship, contact Repository Services Manager Emily Stenberg or email Scholarly Communication & Digital Publishing Services at digital@wumail.wustl.edu.

For information about hosting data in the WashU Research Data (WURD) repository, please reach out to Data Services.

Jump to: Doctoral Dissertation Submission Information | Master’s Thesis Submission Information | Binding Options | Finding WashU Dissertations and Theses | Submitting Undergraduate Honors Theses or Capstone Projects

Doctoral Dissertation Submission Information

Doctoral candidates on the Danforth campus submit their dissertations through their individual schools to ProQuest through an online form. If a school’s guide is not listed, contact your registrar’s office for more information.

After files for a given degree award period have been submitted to ProQuest and posted to their database, those files are then forwarded to WashU Libraries, and library staff merge the files into the Libraries institutional repository, Open Scholarship. This usually occurs three months after commencement.

Dissertation Access Options

Please expand the options below to learn more about the four ProQuest sections that deal with rights and access.

Select the “Traditional Publishing” option. Open Access is provided for free through the WashU repository.

If you choose to delay the release of your work, access to the full text of the dissertation will be delayed for the specified period, though the work’s citation and abstract will be available.

Embargoes expire automatically without notification. Dissertation authors must contact Proquest and Scholarly Communication & Digital Publishing Services (digital@wumail.wustl.edu) to make changes. One renewal for up to three years is allowed. Academic departmental policy may govern the use and duration of embargoes, and students should consult their department. Refer to the Embargoes section of the WashU Libraries Open Scholarship Submission and Use Policy for more information.

Reasons to request an embargo might include that the author pursuing a patent for the work, that the research sponsor requires a specified embargo period, or that the submission includes sensitive or proprietary content, such as work conducted with a corporate partner or a risk of research participants’ identity exposure.

If the option “I do not want my work to be discoverable in Proquest through Google Scholar and other major search engines” is selected when submitting a dissertation, Proquest will not make the work available for indexing until the embargo end date.

The WashU Libraries cannot prevent indexing of its repository site but will honor a dissertation’s embargo date.

Dissertation authors do not need to file for copyright (or ask Proquest to file on their behalf) to include a copyright page in their manuscript.

Please direct copyright questions to WULIB_CopyrightHelp@wumail.wustl.edu

For more information, please see “Copyright Registration” on the Copyright Support page.

Master’s Thesis Submission Information

Master’s theses are submitted directly to the WashU Libraries repository and are reviewed by the appropriate school registrar. Anyone who submits a thesis will first need to create a free account using the following four steps:

  1. Create an account through bepress on Open Scholarship by selecting My Account / Sign up.
  2. You must provide an email address and your full name and create a password. You do not have to use your WUSTL email address, but you should use one you check regularly.
  3. After you sign up, you will receive an email confirmation with a link you must click to activate your account.
  4. Open Scholarship should take you to your My Account page if you have successfully created an account and logged in. You can submit your thesis to the appropriate collection (series) from here.

Thesis Submission Instructions by School

MFA in Visual Art candidates submit their approved theses to Open Scholarship’s MFA in Visual Art using the “Submit Research” option under Author Corner on the left-side menu.

MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture candidates submit their approved theses to Open Scholarship’s MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture using the “Submit Research” option under Author Corner on the left-side menu.

Master’s degree students in the Graduate School of Architecture (MSAS) are expected but not required to submit a thesis to Open Scholarship’s Graduate School of Architecture series. Use the “Submit Research” option on the left-side menu under Author Corner.

Master’s candidates in the Brown School should submit their theses to Open Scholarship’s Brown School Theses and Dissertations using the “Submit Research” option under Author Corner on the left-side menu.

Reviewers from the Brown School will approve the thesis and notify a candidate through the Open Scholarship system.

Master’s candidates in the McKelvey School of Engineering submit their theses electronically to Open Scholarship’s McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations using the “Submit Research” option under Author Corner on the left-side menu.

The McKelvey School of Engineering Reviewers will approve the thesis and notify a candidate through the Open Scholarship system.

Students with a Master’s / MS project in Computer Science and Engineering should submit their projects directly to Open Scholarship’s All Computer Science and Engineering Research collection using the “Submit Research” option under Author Corner on the left-side menu.

Please see the McKelvey School of Engineering Thesis & Dissertation Submission Procedures for more information.

Master’s candidates in Arts & Sciences should submit their theses electronically to Open Scholarship’s Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations using the “Submit Research” option under Arthur Corner on the left-side menu.

Reviewers from Arts & Sciences will approve the thesis and notify a candidate through the Open Scholarship system.

For more information, please see the Office of Graduate Studies Guides (for Arts & Sciences).

Binding Options

The University does not accept paper copies for binding. However, individuals may order a bound copy on their own through Thesis on Demand; please see the Dissertation Guide for more information.

If there are questions about using Thesis on Demand, please visit the Thesis on Demand FAQ page (enter “63130” as the zip code, even for students on the medical campus).

Finding WashU Dissertations and Theses

  • WashU Open Scholarship (2009 – ) | Beginning in 2009, all theses and dissertations completed at WashU must be submitted in electronic form. Dissertations are submitted directly to UMI / Proquest Dissertation Services; Master’s theses are locally submitted to the WashU Open Scholarship Repository.
  • Dissertations & Theses @ Washington University in St. Louis (1996-) | Full-text. Citations and abstracts of dissertations and theses submitted by WashU and published in UMI’s Dissertation Abstracts database. View 24-page previews of dissertations and theses and download the full-text.
  • WashU Classic Catalog | To limit to dissertations and theses, modify search and add title=theses and/or author=Washington University (Saint Louis, Mo.).
  • Quick Search | Researchers may find dissertations when filtering the Resource Type by Dissertations.
  • ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I (1743-) | The complete range of academic subjects appearing in dissertations accepted at accredited institutions since 1743, updated monthly. View 24-page previews of dissertations and theses and download the full-text. Abstracts are included from July 1980; abstracts for master’s theses begin in Spring 1988.

    Not all universities require doctoral candidates to submit their dissertations to this database. For the most comprehensive search, include other sources. Learn more about the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database.

    Note: Researchers cannot request full-text dissertations or theses from the ProQuest database. To request full-text dissertations or theses found on the ProQuest database, log in to ILLiad, select Request a Thesis, and complete the form.

Finding WashU Dissertations and Theses FAQs

Submitting Undergraduate Honors Theses or Capstone Projects

Undergraduate Honors Theses or Capstone Projects may be submitted to Open Scholarship Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses using the Submit Research option under the Author Corner on the left-side menu.

Department or school-specific collections are at:

Students may choose Restricted (campus-only) or Unrestricted (worldwide) access. Administrators do not review content before posting it and making it available online. Please ensure you have reviewed the content with your mentor(s) to confirm that you are authorized to include all the content, including data, in your submission.

Undergraduate students are encouraged to read through the Submission Guidelines for Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses and the Policies for Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses.