Nearly all dissertations specified examples at hand (5)
I believe the answer is:
these
'specified examples at hand' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I cannot judge whether this works.
'nearly all dissertations' is the wordplay.
'nearly all' means to remove the last letter.
'dissertations' becomes 'theses' ('thesis' can be a synonym of 'dissertation').
'theses' with its last letter taken away is 'THESE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for these that I've seen before include "Teh other ones from those" , "Plural form of this" , "Pronoun for people or things" , "This lot" , "He set (anag)" .)