In principle, German universities are required to publish all dissertations and postdoctoral theses. In fulfilling its collection mandate, the German National Library has amassed an extensive collection of dissertations and postdoctoral theses dating back to 1913.

With the rapid rise of digital publication in the late 1990s, the German National Library cooperated with university and college libraries across Germany to develop standards for metadata formats, the formats used by online university publications, and the transmission of these through the OAI-PMH interface. Online dissertations were the first online publications to be collected, and the German National Library began doing so in 1998. Many of the standards developed at that time – through a series of projects titled "DissOnline" – still form the backbone of the German National Library's online publication collecting activities today.

Further information about online publications

Further information about online dissertations in the German National Library

Our collection of university publications is particularly valuable to the scientific community, which is why we also make them available in DNBLab:

Our catalogue offers a wide range of options for researching university publications.

Anleitung zur Suche von Dissertationen und Habilitationen im Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek 337kB, PDF - Not barrier-free file. (only available in German)

Statistic

Online university publications have been collected, at the German National Library since 1998. The chart below illustrates the growth in the percentage of digital university publications over time.