How to Cite a Thesis or Dissertation in MLA & APA (With Examples)

By MLA Generator Editorial Team · Updated July 7, 2026

Every guide to citing a dissertation opens with the same question — is it published or unpublished? — and the two big styles answer it in opposite ways. MLA abolished the question: since the 2016 handbook, one format covers every dissertation, whether it sits in ProQuest or in a desk drawer. APA 7 made the question the whole ballgame: a dissertation in a database or repository is published, one you got from the author is not, and the two references are built differently. Add the thousands of library pages still showing the retired APA 6 format, and this is a source type worth taking from the official rules. The MLA Style Center and APA Style both publish dissertation formats with real examples, and this guide follows them exactly.

The shortest answer: in MLA, cite a dissertation as a stand-alone work — author, title in italics, the year the degree was awarded, then the institution and a description of the work. Njus, Jesse. Performing the Passion: A Study on the Nature of Medieval Acting. 2010. Northwestern U, PhD dissertation. If you read it in a database, add a second container: ProQuest, then the URL. In-text is ordinary author-page: (Njus 24).

What counts as a thesis or dissertation

The formats on this page cover the finished document a degree program accepts: a doctoral dissertation, a master’s thesis, an undergraduate or honors thesis, an MFA thesis. The MLA Style Center’s definition explains the formatting: a dissertation is “a finished, stand-alone work written under the auspices of an institution.” Stand-alone is why the title gets italics like a book’s; the institution is why a university sits where a publisher normally would. Only the description changes with the degree — “PhD dissertation,” “Master’s thesis,” “Honors thesis.”

Some dissertation-adjacent sources are better cited as something else:

• A journal article carved out of the dissertation is a journal article. If the findings made it into print, cite the article — it is the version of record.
• A dissertation later published as a book by a university press is a book; AMA says this explicitly, and it holds everywhere. Cite the edition you used.
• A conference talk based on the research is a lecture or presentation, with its own date and venue.
• A dissertation abstract is not the dissertation — get the full text before citing; most are one repository click away.

If the title page says a degree was granted for it, this page applies.

Information to collect before you cite

The title page and the database or repository record between them carry everything:

• Author’s full name — as printed on the title page.
• Exact title — italicized in MLA and APA, quotation marks in Chicago.
• Year the degree was awarded — not the year the file was uploaded; repository records sometimes show both.
• Institution that granted the degree — MLA abbreviates University to U (Northwestern U); APA spells it out.
• Degree type — PhD, EdD, master’s, honors. This becomes MLA’s description and APA’s bracketed label.
• Where you read it — ProQuest, PQDT Open, an institutional repository, or a copy from the author. In APA this single fact decides the whole format.
• ProQuest publication number — the “Publication No.” on the record; APA wants it when the database assigns one.
• URL, and whether it resolves without a login — APA includes the URL only if it will work for your reader.

The generator at / pulls the title, author, and year from a pasted repository or ProQuest link and formats the rest. Double-check the degree type and publication number by hand — no metadata field carries them reliably.

One dissertation in all seven styles

The dissertation below is one of the three examples on APA Style’s official “Published dissertation or thesis references” page, so the APA row is the official entry verbatim. The MLA row applies the MLA Style Center’s official pattern — the one it demonstrates with the Njus example — to the same document, with the repository as the second container.

The source: Laura Zambrano-Vazquez’s PhD dissertation, The Interaction of State and Trait Worry on Response Monitoring in Those with Worry and Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms, accepted by the University of Arizona in 2016 and available in the UA Campus Repository at https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/620615. Accessed July 5, 2026.

Two decisions split the styles. The first is what happens to the title. MLA italicizes it in title case; APA italicizes it in sentence case; Chicago puts it in quotation marks, because the 18th edition classes dissertations with unpublished works — and IEEE quotes the title too, while Vancouver italicizes nothing. The second is where the repository goes. MLA makes it a second container: name in italics, then the URL, exactly as it treats ProQuest. APA puts it in the source element, roman type, and then decides about the URL: include it when it resolves for readers, end with the database name alone when a login wall blocks them. The other four styles fall back on their online-document rules and append the URL, most with an access date.

The in-text citation for the same dissertation, pointing at page 24:

• MLA: (Zambrano-Vazquez 24) — ordinary author-page; no special form for dissertations
• APA: (Zambrano-Vazquez, 2016, p. 24) or narrative Zambrano-Vazquez (2016, p. 24)
• Chicago: author-date papers use (Zambrano-Vazquez 2016, 24); notes-bibliography papers cite it in a footnote — see Edge cases
• Harvard: (Zambrano-Vazquez, 2016, p. 24)
• Vancouver: (1) or superscript ¹
• AMA: superscript ¹ only
• IEEE: [1]

How to cite a thesis or dissertation in MLA

The MLA 9 works-cited template — core elements plus the optional institution and description the MLA Style Center recommends:

Author Last Name, First Name. Dissertation Title. Year. Institution, Description. Database or Repository, URL.

The MLA Style Center’s official example for a dissertation in hand:

Njus, Jesse. Performing the Passion: A Study on the Nature of Medieval Acting. 2010. Northwestern U, PhD dissertation.

And its official example for the same dissertation read online, where the database is “the title of the second container” — which is why ProQuest is italicized:

Njus, Jesse. Performing the Passion: A Study on the Nature of Medieval Acting. 2010. Northwestern U, PhD dissertation. ProQuest, search.proquest.com/docview/305212264?accountid=7432.

The rules behind the entries: the title is italicized because a dissertation is a stand-alone work; the university takes MLA’s standard abbreviation, U; and the institution plus description (“PhD dissertation,” “Master’s thesis,” “MA thesis”) is technically an optional element — include it anyway, because it is the only thing telling your reader what kind of source this is. Most importantly, MLA states that “in a change from the previous edition of the MLA Handbook,” it “does not distinguish between published and unpublished dissertations.” There is no “Unpublished” label in MLA, ever — the Njus entry above is correct whether the dissertation was bound in a library or emailed to you by its author.

The in-text citation is standard author-page: (Njus 24).

The variants you are most likely to need:

A master’s thesis. Identical shape; only the description changes:

Lastname, Firstname. Title of Thesis. 2023. U of Michigan, Master’s thesis.

In a university repository. The repository fills the second container, exactly like ProQuest — the table above shows the full entry: UA Campus Repository, repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/620615.

A print or emailed copy. Stop after the description. The first Njus entry is complete as written; MLA needs no access statement and no publication status.

How to cite a thesis or dissertation in APA

APA 7 (Publication Manual, Section 10.6) starts from one question: is the dissertation published? The official rule draws the line generously — “a dissertation or thesis is considered published when it is available from a database such as ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global or PQDT Open, an institutional repository, or an archive.” If a stranger can find it, it is published. The published template:

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of dissertation in sentence case (Publication No. 123456) [Doctoral dissertation, Institution]. Database or Repository Name. URL

APA’s official examples walk through the three situations, and the differences between them are the whole trick. A login-walled database — publication number, database name, no URL:

Kabir, J. M. (2016). Factors influencing customer satisfaction at a fast food hamburger chain: The relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (Publication No. 10169573) [Doctoral dissertation, Wilmington University]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.

An open database — publication number and URL (the database is PQDT Open; APA’s own page misspells it “PDQT” in one spot):

Miranda, C. (2019). Exploring the lived experiences of foster youth who obtained graduate level degrees: Self-efficacy, resilience, and the impact on identity development (Publication No. 27542827) [Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University]. PQDT Open. https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/2309521814.html?FMT=AI

An institutional repository — no publication number, URL included: the Zambrano-Vazquez entry in the table above. The connecting logic, in APA’s words: include the publication number “if the database assigns publication numbers”; put “Doctoral dissertation” or “Master’s thesis” plus the awarding institution “in square brackets after the dissertation or thesis title and any publication number”; and include a URL only “if the URL will resolve for readers” — if the database “requires users to log in,” end with the database name, as in the Kabir example.

An unpublished dissertation swaps the machinery for one bracket and one name. APA’s rule: use the description “[Unpublished doctoral dissertation]” or “[Unpublished master’s thesis],” and give the institution that awarded the degree as the source. The official example:

Harris, L. (2014). Instructional leadership perceptions and practices of elementary school leaders [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Virginia.

And the tiebreaker, verbatim: “If you find the dissertation or thesis in a database or in a repository or archive, follow the published dissertation or thesis reference examples.”

In-text, straight from APA’s pages: parenthetical (Kabir, 2016; Miranda, 2019; Zambrano-Vazquez, 2016); narrative Kabir (2016), Miranda (2019), Harris (2014).

Edge cases

Your reference says “(Master’s thesis). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database. (AAT 1482012).” That is APA 6, retired in 2019, and countless library guides still serve it. APA 7 moved the degree type and institution into square brackets after the title, moved the database into the source element, and renamed the accession number a publication number placed in parentheses after the title. Rebuild the reference on the Kabir pattern.

You cannot decide if ProQuest counts as published. In APA it does — the database rule quoted above settles it. In MLA the question does not exist: one format for every dissertation since 2016.

The ProQuest URL is full of proxy junk. APA sidesteps the problem: a login-walled ProQuest reference ends at the database name, no URL at all. MLA’s own example reproduces a proxied link, accountid and all — so you will not be marked down for one — but a URL that only works on your campus helps nobody, and the docview link without the query string serves readers better. The same cleanup applies to any database PDF.

An undergraduate or honors thesis. APA says the published format “can be adapted for other published theses, including undergraduate theses, by changing the wording of the bracketed description” — so [Undergraduate honors thesis, Western University], or [Unpublished undergraduate honors thesis] plus the university for one that never left the department. MLA handles it in the description slot: Northwestern U, Honors thesis.

Citing your own thesis. No special form — you are the author, cited like any other. Repository format once it is deposited, unpublished format while it lives only on your hard drive — and check your program’s rules on reusing your own prior work.

Thesis or dissertation? In the US, master’s degrees end in theses and doctorates in dissertations; in the UK and much of the Commonwealth it is reversed — a PhD thesis. Do not translate: describe the work the way the degree-granting institution does. “PhD thesis” is a correct MLA description and a correct APA bracket for a British doctorate.

The dissertation is not finished yet. A draft or in-progress dissertation has not been accepted, so it is not a dissertation for citation purposes — APA’s guidance on unpublished works treats it as an unpublished manuscript: Author. (Year). Title [Unpublished manuscript]. Department, University. If the author defends before you submit, upgrade the reference.

You need Chicago. The 18th edition (September 2024) puts thesis titles in quotation marks, not italics. Bibliography entry: Rutz, Cynthia Lillian. “King Lear and Its Folktale Analogues.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2013. Note: Cynthia Lillian Rutz, “King Lear and Its Folktale Analogues” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2013), 99–100. (King Lear stays italic inside the quotation marks because it is a play title.) A copy read in a database appends the database and its accession number — for example, ProQuest followed by the number the database assigns to that dissertation. The table above shows the author-date form for this guide’s example dissertation, with the year moved up behind the author.

You need IEEE or AMA. IEEE’s model, with the department spelled into the entry: J. O. Williams, “Narrow-band analyzer,” Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. Elect. Eng., Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, USA, 1993. AMA 11 italicizes the title, sets the descriptor as its own sentence after the title, and treats the institution as the publisher — with no bracketed label and no city or state, both dropped in the 11th edition: Author A. Title of Dissertation. Dissertation. Institution; Year. If the dissertation was formally published as a book, AMA says to cite it as a book.

The principle underneath all of it: a dissertation is a stand-alone work with a university standing where the publisher would be. Name the author, italicize the title (unless you write in Chicago), date it by the year the degree was awarded, say what degree it earned, and tell the reader which database or repository holds it. Only APA asks whether it is published — and its answer is just “can a stranger find it?”

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