Research Guides: POLS 223: American Political Process: The Congress (HC): Journal Articles

Locating Journal Articles

Journal articles provide focused, reliable, and often up-to-date, information and analysis on public issues and politics. The following indexes are the most relevant for finding scholarly journal articles on your topics.

Core Indexes

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
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Provides citations and abstracts of journals in political science and related fields including international relations, law, and public administration/policy. Covers 1975-present.
Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS) Index
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Provides abstracts of journal articles, books, government documents, statistical compilations, committee reports, intergovernmental, and private organizations reports. Areas covered include political, economic, social and public policy issues. Covers 1915-present.

America: History & Life
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Indexes journal articles and book reviews covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present.

Indexes for Related Subject Areas

EconLit
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Provides abstracts to economic articles, books, book reviews, dissertations, and working papers. Topics include economic theory and history, monetary theory, labor economics, international, regional and urban economics. Coverage 1969-present.
GreenFILE
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An interdisciplinary database covering all aspects of human impact on the environment. Excellent resource for finding information on global climate change, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
HeinOnline
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Database of full text legal articles and primary documents. Collections include: Law Journal Library, U.S. Congressional Documents, U.S. Federal Legislative History Library, U.S. Presidential Library, U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Supreme Court Library, and many others.
ProQuest Education Database
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A large database of education research, including journal articles, books, reports, and other sources.

Sociological Abstracts
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Find journal articles, essays in books, dissertations and more in the fields of sociology and related disciplines. Covers material published from 1963 to the present.

Multidisciplinary Indexes

JSTOR
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Provides full-text and page images from many of the top journals in most academic disciplines. But note that the most recent issues of journals (three to five years or more) are not included in JSTOR. Use a different database if you need very current information.
ProQuest Research Library
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Provides citations and full-text magazine and journal articles in a wide variety of disciplines, both scholarly and popular in scope. Covers 1971-present.

Tracking Citations Forward in Time

Usually researchers find more sources by looking at the footnotes in an article or book, but these will always be older than the publication you have in hand.
Citation indexes like the Web of Science (which includes sections for the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, and Science) are set up to search for sources cited in the footnotes of journal articles as soon as they become available. This allows you to find newer articles which cite the books and articles you already know are key for your topic. By relying on connections between authors rather than subject words and by moving forward in time, citation searching can open up new avenues of research.

See this tutorial for more information on cited reference searching.

Web of Science
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When you connect, choose the Cited Reference Search tab to begin.
Enter the author's name: Last name first, First name initial only with asterisk.
Skip Cited Title box.
Put the publication year in the Cited Year box.
Under Current Limits, open Citation Databases and uncheck Science Citation Index and Conference Proceedings Science.
On the next screen choose the relevant results based on the Cited Work titles.
The results screen shows the newest articles first. Most records include a summary of contents, so that you can determine how relevant they may be for your research.

Google Scholar
To search for cited references in Google Scholar, enter the title of the article or book in quotation marks. In the results list, check the link Cited by [number] for material citing the title you have entered.
Bonus Google Scholar includes books in its results. Web of Science is limited to journal articles only.

POLS 223: American Political Process: The Congress (HC)

Why Use Journal Articles?

Scholarly journal articles are important sources of information offering:

Originality. Provides new evidence and interpretations.

Authoritativeness. Written by researchers for their peers.

Documentation. Cites key scholarship in footnotes that you can check.

Reliability. Reviewed by researchers and editors for significance and accuracy.

Conciseness. Presents an argument cogently

Engagement. Responds to issues and adds to an ongoing dialog.

Currency. Treats issues more quickly than books due to publishing schedules

Locating Journal Articles

Tracking Citations Forward in Time