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Searching ProQuest's Dissertations & Theses: Searchable Fields

This guide is a brief introduction to all aspects of ProQuest Dissertations & Theses including content, searching, and viewing results on the new ProQuest platform. Content provided by and edited with permission from ProQuest.

Look Ups and Browsable Indexes

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses offers five Look ups or browsable indexes, so you can easily find spelling or format variations of, for example, an author's name or a subject name. You can find the Look up links in the advanced search page and they are available for the following searchable fields: Author, Advisor, Subject name, Index term and School name. For a description of these fields, please see the Searchable fields table to the right. 

Note: Look ups are also available from the Command Line search (through the Look up terms link). Several of the searchable fields from the Look Up Citation search form also offer Look up links.

To use and locate a Look up or browsable index, select the field from the Advanced Search pull-down menu. If a Look up is available, under the search row you will see a link to the Look up. Other Look ups and browsable indexes will be listed in the Limit To section of the Advanced Search page.

Select the Look up link and then you will see a browsable and alphabetical index for that field. There are some indexes that will not display an alphabetical list before searching for the term, rather you will have to enter a term first, and then the alphabetical list of matches will display.

Once you locate the index term that you would like to add to your search, mark the item, and then click the Add to search button. The index term will now appear in the advanced search form along with the appropriate pull-down menu selection.

Searchable Fields

 

Field Name

Label

Search Examples & Explanation

Abstract

 AB

AB(child welfare worker)

We use the author-provided abstract with little or no modification, or have members from our editorial team write an abstract from scratch, drawing on the document’s text and concepts. Our team’s goal is to make the document’s point as clearly and succinctly as possible.

Citations for dissertations published from 1980 forward also include 350-word abstracts written by the author. Citations for master's theses from 1988 forward include 150-word abstracts.

Advisor

ADV

ADV(Fogel, Aaron)

Search for dissertations completed under the supervision of a specific academic advisor. If unsure of the spelling of a name, try using truncation. Advisor names are searchable in the following ways: ADV(first name), ADV(last name), ADV(last name, first name) or ADV(first name last name).

All Fields

ALL

ALL(digital divide)

ALL searches for keywords in the citation and abstract. It is a full record search, but does not include a search on the full text. The following fields are searched: Author Name, Abstract, Title, Subject Terms, Keywords, Advisor, School, Department, School Location, Manuscript Type, Publication number, ISBN.

Alternate Language Title

OTI

OTI("The local area as a strategy for sustainable urban development")

Use to look for dissertations by their alternate language title. For example, search for documents originally published in Spanish by searching for an alternate title in English.

Author

AU

 

AU(Kinsley, Michael)

Use to find documents written by a particular author.

Cited Author

CAU

CAU(Greenspan)

Use to search for an author that is part of the Cited References section of a record.

Cited Document Title

CTI

CTI(Mortgages)

Use to search for document titles that are part of the Cited References section of a record.

Cited Publication Date

CYR

CYR(October 1987)

Use to search for publication dates that are part of the Cited References section of a record.

Cited Publication Title

CPUB

CPUB(economist)

Use to search for a publication title that is part of the Cited References section of a record.

Committee Member

CMT

CMT(Frazier, Michael)

Use to search for dissertations reviewed by specific committee members. If you're unsure of the spelling of a name, try using truncation. Committte member names are searchable in the following ways: CMT(first name), CMT(last name), CMT(last name, first name) or CMT(first name last name)

Degree

DG

DG(MLIS)

Use to search on a graduate work for a particular degree, such as Ed. D. Also used to search for degree names. For master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation records, identifies the degree.

Department

DEP

DEP(Computer Science)

Use this field to search for dissertations granted by a specific department

Document Text

FT

FT(Mortgage backed securities)

Search for keywords in the body of the document. The abstracts are not included in this search.

Document Title

TI

 

TI(BRIC)

Locates the occurrence of search words in the title of the document.

Index Terms

DISKW

DISKW(habitat selection)

When an author submits their dissertation or thesis to ProQuest, they are required to select at least one and up to three subject headings from this list.

International Standard Book Number

ISBN

ISBN(91 7170 355 1)

ISBN(9781124926193)

This search field looks for both the ten-digit and the currently used thirteen-digit International Standard Book Number (ISBN), where available. Spaces are required in the ten-digit ISBN searches (do not enter hyphens). The 13 digit ISBN works just fine with or without any spaces or hyphens

Language

LA

LA(Spanish)

Use to locate the original language of the document.

Publication/order number

DISPUB

DISPUB(3130208)

Search for a specific dissertation by publication number. This number appears in each citation. You must OMIT “AAT” from the ID number. You can include or omit any dashes.

Publication year

YR

YR(2012)

Use to find a specific publication year.

References

REF

REF(nanotubes)

Use the reference search field to look for the data in a cited reference. It will search all of the main components of a cited reference (cited author, cited document title, cited publication date and cited publication title).

School location

SCHLOC

SCHLOC(Denmark)

Lets you search for a school in a specific geographic location, such as state, province or country. From the Browse tab, you can browse by location to select from a list of the available locations.

School name / code

SCH

SCHNAME(University of Michigan)

SCH(sweden)

Search for dissertations granted by a specific school. Enter the school name or four-digit school code. You can use this field to search for a list of all schools within a particular country by entering the country name.

Subject Heading(All)

SU

SU(Accounts)

This field searches all subject-like fields in dissertations, meaning Subject name, Index Terms, committee member, degree, department, advisors and school name.

Use the subject search field to look for documents about a specific subject. A search for the subject heading “accounts,” will find articles with the subject accounts, health savings accounts or checking accounts. To run an exact subject search where only “accounts” is retrieved and not subject terms that contain additional terms, search using EXACT.

SU.EXACT(accounts)

Subject name

SU

SU(Music)

Use this field to look for dissertations or theses about a specific subject.

You can enter a subject name. You can also open the Browse tab to select subjects from a list of those available. Subject terms in this field conform to the ProQuest/UMI Controlled Vocabulary.

Supplemental file types

SPTYPE

SPTYPE(video)

Use to search for dissertations containing supplemental files such as images, videos, documents or spreadsheets. Enter the supplemental file type (Audio, Code-Script, Data, Image, Other, PDF, Presentation, Spreadsheet, Text, Unknown, Video).

In some cases, you may have to download specific software or plug-ins in order to be able to view supplemental files.

NOTE: Supplemental files content is only accessible from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text.

Tags

TAG

TAG(school)

Use to search for Tags attached to graduate works. This field is user generated and only searches Tags that were made public by ProQuest users.

Volume/issue (DVI)

DISVOL

DISVOL(DAI-B 56-02)

Use to search for the DAI (Dissertation Abstracts International) database or the MAI (Master's Abstracts International) database. The default setting specifies a search across both.

Use this field to narrow your search to social sciences and humanities (volume A) or sciences and engineering (volume B). Or search for specific issue numbers.

Note: Limiting by volume or issue may not make sense if your subscription only covers a portion of the database.