This page highlights the unique search features for ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Go to the Platform LibGuide for a complete guide to ProQuest's search and display features.
The ProQuest Research Assistant, developed in collaboration with librarians, faculty, and users, is powered by curated, responsible AI technology to address common pain points for students and researchers. With ProQuest Research Assistant, novice and expert researchers alike can streamline research, gain deeper insights, and discover the value of graduate scholarship with a set of AI generated features:
Key Takeaways: Quickly evaluate topic relevancy to work more efficiently.
Important Concepts: Build deeper understanding within the research workflow.
Suggested Research Topics: Explore related research topics for course assignments or capstone projects
To find out more about the ProQuest Research Assistant on PQDT Global please read the FAQs on the Support Center.
ProQuest Research Assistant
This AI-powered feature can help you with time-consuming research tasks. Let’s explore the core features in this brief walkthrough.
Key Takeaways: The key takeaway is designed to help users quickly evaluate the dissertation’s relevance to their research.
Related Research Topics: This tool can help a user find further direction to take their research or choose a topic for an assignment.
Important Concepts: This is a list of concepts and their explanation that are relevant in the context of the document, sorted in the order of importance. Each concept is hyperlinked so that you can run a search on any individual term by clicking on it and help to continue your research.
Tool Tips: Click on the +1 to view all options related to the research assistant
Expand the Research Assistant Panel: You can also choose to expand the RA into a much larger space, known as the 'Big View', if it is what you want to focus your interaction on. Click on the dual arrow to expand the Research Assistant to view all the options.
ProQuest brings more focus to the search process by combining its unique dissertation citation database with knowledge graph technology, delivering only highly relevant, impactful sources, including newspapers, journal articles, dissertations, and more. The new Citation Connections, a dynamic network discovery tool which transform each dissertation or theses into a catalyst for topic-related source collection for all types of users.
Users will now find Citation Connection features – research tools unique to dissertations – are integrated into the ProQuest Research Assistant.
Foundational Research – Quickly receive a set of highly co-cited sources in a subject area to begin building subject expertise
Similar Dissertations – Accelerate the discovery of additional graduate research related to a topic.
Foundational Research
Foundational Research panel displays all those records who shares at least five similar references with the seed document. These foundational research documents are available with number of citations which may be journal articles, newspapers, books, dissertations, video etc. Foundational Research records are ranked according to the frequency with which they are cited by documents in the Neighborhood. These documents are available in ProQuest databases that have cited this source.
The idea behind the Foundational Research papers is to connect the students and research scholars with those highly cited research documents which have related themes and ideas with the seed document. This collection of Foundational Research documents can be useful when building a foundational understanding of a topic or when selecting a topic for a research project.
Dissertation citations
Dissertation citations are extracted, cross-linked, and searchable, offering users a “ready-made” list of sources on a topic through Reference links, Cited by links, and Shared References links. Researchers can quickly build a credible source list targeted to their specific topic.
Similar Dissertations
Similar Dissertations is a collection of dissertations with research closely aligned with the seed document displayed on the page, which can be useful to identify other dissertations that have been written on this topic.
Similarity Index
The similarity index is used to rank the collection of Similar Dissertations by the degree of relationship to the topic of the seed document displayed on the page. The closer the score is to 100%, the more likely this dissertation is about the same topic.
Shared References
Shared References is the number of references in common with the seed document displayed on the page. The more references in common, the more likely the overlap in the topic of research.
Tool Tips
Click on any “i” icon to view the description of a feature for more information.
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).
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.
Each Look-up provides a search and browse function and the ability to add multiple terms separated by Boolean Operators similar to the thesaurus.
Some of the Look up links will be listed in the lower section of the advanced search page.
In Advanced Search, you can find 2 boxes with advanced limiters: Manuscript types provides a controlled list highly specific to this database, and Language features allows to select dissertation/thesis with several types of languages.
On the results page, you can access a distinctive feature to filter documents by university or institution, as well as their location.
On your results page, you may find links to supplemental files, options to order a copy, and references, if they are available.
Supplemental files are included if part of the documentation that had been submitted with the dissertations/theses text to enhance the scholarly record. You can download the supplemental files as required:
You can use the order a copy tab to purchase any dissertation/thesis.
You can dive deeper into the relevant literature by reviewing references within each dissertation on your topic. Examining the resources that other authors rely upon may reveal a very useful resource that hadn’t turned up in your own search.
If one of the References is available to your library through another ProQuest database, you will be able to click on the reference to view the full record.
Documents with shared references consist of a list of works that cite some of the same sources as the current document. This feature can help you discover related papers and authors active in the same research area.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global offers browsing (in addition to searching) as a way of finding content. Use this page to easily locate dissertations/theses based on subject and location.
