Lists of references of Russian Ph.D. theses in construction defended in Russia from January 1 to October 5, 2019, were stratified by date, amount of self-citations, language, and Scopus rating. The average list consists of 149 items, including 33 not in Russian (23,2% of total), 9 self-citations (6,2%), 16 self-citations, and references to the supervisor (11,5%), 18 not older than three years (13,1%). Nine Scopus-articles in English after 1999  are on the average list, including 7 journal articles, 2 articles in conference proceedings, and one article of SciVal leading scientists (0,9%). Half of theses (29 of 54) have no references to the articles of the top authors by scholarly output in SciVal topics, six theses have no references to Scopus-articles in English. The best by the average number of references to English Scopus are thesis сouncils 212.138.10 (Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, 5 theses), 999.183.02 (Russian University of Transport and Research Institute of Transport Construction, 2 theses) and 218.005.05 (Russian University of Transport, 1 thesis). The scientific level and scientific ethics of Ph.D. theses were not considered in this article.