To order a digitised thesis you will need to register and login to EThOS, and then place your order for a scanned copy.

When you place an order, the thesis is requested automatically from the supplying institution and then scanned by the British Library at cost recovery price.

Pricing and turnaround times are shown before you order your scan. If the awarding institution holds a budget for the digitisation of their theses, there is no cost to the user; if the institution does not fund digitisation of its own theses, you will need to pay the scan fee.

The digitised thesis is added to EThOS and the requesting user notified that it has become available for download. Where a digitisation fee is payable, it is charged at this point. The thesis becomes available for immediate free download by all future users.

Turnaround times

When you order a digitised thesis, an automated email is sent to the supplying institution to request the paper thesis. The institution library is asked to retrieve the requested thesis and post it to EThOS by the start of the next working day to help keep turnaround times to a minimum.

Once we receive the thesis, it is digitised and loaded to EThOS within 20 working days. The researcher is then notified by email that it is available for download. You can track the progress of your order in your EThOS Order History.

Scan quality

Theses are scanned at a quality to ensure all text, images and other parts are completely legible whilst offering a cost-effective service for researchers seeking to access digital copies for their own research. All digitised theses are OCRed, and theses are scanned in greyscale or colour to represent the item as accurately as possible.

Full details of the scan quality applied in our thesis digitisation service can be found here.

More about digitisation

Some institutions do not offer digitisation via EThOS. In such cases you may be able to visit the university library to view the original, and some institutions offer their own digitisation service.

The British Library’s own Digitisation Services can work with a vast range of material other than theses. Revive your organisation's own collections with our digitisation services; we can manage your project from start to finish and are experts in handling rare and fragile material.