Written and maintained by CASRAI Editorial Board
Last updated
Theses.fr is the French national search engine for doctoral theses. It is run by the Agence Bibliographique de l’Enseignement Supérieur (ABES) and lists theses defended in France since 1985, theses in preparation, and the people involved in French doctoral research. You search it; you do not register on it, because the records come from the institutions that award the doctorate.
What theses.fr is
- Name: theses.fr, described on its home page as “le moteur de recherche des thèses françaises” (the search engine for French theses).
- Operator: ABES, the French higher-education bibliographic agency. The Ministry of Higher Education and Research (MESR) logo appears in the site footer.
- Country and scope: France. It covers doctoral theses defended in France since 1985, doctoral projects still in preparation, and the people linked to them.
- Language: the interface is in French. The labels you need are listed in the search section below.
ABES’s own description of the service says it is used to identify a doctoral project (in progress or completed) and its versions, to reach the full text online where it exists, to build a bibliography, to identify supervisors, jury members, research structures and institutions, and to find libraries that hold a copy.
Who deposits and who searches
Doctoral candidates do not create a theses.fr account to appear in it. ABES states that higher-education institutions have a legal obligation to use the national application STAR to report and archive theses deposited electronically. Archiving is carried out by CINES, and STAR is linked to HAL theses for online publication. Electronic theses submitted through STAR also feed Sudoc, the French academic union catalogue. In practice the chain runs from the institution’s deposit through STAR to the catalogue records that theses.fr exposes, so questions about a missing or wrong record go to the awarding institution’s doctoral school or library first.
Anyone can search. Since the 2024 version of the site, ABES restricts access to theses that are under embargo to members of the higher-education and research community.
Theses.fr and Sudoc overlap but differ in scope: ABES notes that Sudoc records theses defended in France since 1972, and medical and dental exercise theses since 1982, while theses.fr starts in 1985.
How to search theses.fr
- Open theses.fr. The main search field is labelled “Rechercher des thèses”. Type an author, title, supervisor, institution or subject.
- Autocomplete suggestions appear while you type. The toggle “Désactiver l’aide à la saisie” switches this typing assistance off.
- For field-by-field queries use “Recherche Avancée” (advanced search).
- To browse by category instead of searching, use the “Explorer” buttons for defended theses (“thèses soutenues”), theses in preparation (“thèses en préparation”) and linked people (“personnes liées aux thèses”).
- Open a result to see its record. Where the full text is online, the record points to it; otherwise ABES says you can find a library holding a copy, either for on-site consultation or through interlibrary loan (PEB in French).
For repeatable literature searches, ABES says query results can be exported in CSV and JSON formats and that saved queries can be followed by RSS.
What a record contains and how it is used in evaluation or funding
A record identifies a doctoral project and its versions and links it to the people and structures involved: the author, the supervisors, the reviewers and jury members, the research structure and the awarding institution. ABES puts the number of linked people at roughly 873,000 as of 31 August 2024, with about 455,700 defended and 77,900 in-preparation theses at that date; the live counters on the home page change continually, so check the site for current figures.
theses.fr is not a ranking or funding instrument. Its documented uses are bibliographic and administrative: verifying that a doctorate exists and who supervised it, tracing the supervision and jury network behind a thesis, and locating the document.
Links to IdRef, ORCID and other identifiers
Theses.fr links people to IdRef, the identifier and authority base for higher education and research maintained by ABES. ABES describes IdRef as providing persistent identification for thesis authors, supervisors, jury members and related organisations, and the theses.fr home page links to it. IdRef is therefore the identifier you can expect to meet on a theses.fr person record. For how IdRef connects to ORCID, ISNI and VIAF, see the CASRAI guide to IdRef, France’s national researcher identifier.
IdRef is the identifier linked on theses.fr person records. For how IdRef and ORCID are connected, follow the IdRef guide above. A thesis deposited through STAR to HAL theses can also be discovered through HAL, which is a separate route from theses.fr.
For related national thesis infrastructure elsewhere, compare Shodhganga, India’s thesis repository. For the general concept, see the dictionary entries for electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) and thesis; the site also offers dissertation vs thesis, and the French national research data portal is covered in Recherche Data Gouv. The home page also lists a resource link to “Global ETD Search”, an international search of electronic theses.
Open data and API
The theses.fr home page links to “theses.fr en Open Data” and “API de theses.fr”, both pointing to data.gouv.fr, the French open-data platform, where the full extraction of defended-thesis data and the available APIs are listed. Use those pages for the current data files and terms rather than scraping the interface.
Common problems
- A thesis is listed but there is no full text. Only some theses are online. ABES says the record helps you find a library holding a copy, for on-site consultation or interlibrary loan.
- A thesis is under embargo. Since the 2024 version, embargoed theses are visible only to members of the higher-education and research community. See thesis embargo and patent filing for why embargoes are used.
- A recent defence does not appear. Records come from institutional deposit and reporting through STAR, so the awarding institution is the place to ask.
- The interface is in French. Use the labels in the search section above, or a browser translation tool.
- Counts on the home page differ from older figures. The counters update continually; cite the date you read them.
FAQ
What is theses.fr?
The French search engine for doctoral theses, operated by ABES, covering theses defended in France since 1985 plus theses in preparation.
Do I need to register to use theses.fr?
No account is needed to search. Candidates are not added by self-registration: institutions report theses through the national STAR application.
Can I export search results?
Yes. ABES states that results can be exported in CSV and JSON, and saved queries can be followed by RSS.
Is theses.fr the same as Sudoc?
No. Sudoc is the French academic union catalogue and records theses defended in France since 1972; theses.fr is the dedicated thesis search engine starting from 1985. Electronic theses submitted through STAR feed Sudoc.
Does theses.fr show ORCID iDs?
theses.fr links person records to IdRef rather than ORCID. See the IdRef guide linked above for the ORCID connection.
Sources (official pages, read 29 October 2026)
- theses.fr home page, ABES.
- ABES: Explorer les données (theses.fr), data as of 31 August 2024.
- ABES: Réseau thèses (STAR, theses.fr, IdRef).
