GSST 190: Introduction to Feminist and Gender Studies (HC)

Journal articles provide in-depth scholarly information for your research.  They are vetted and improved by peer review prior to publication.  They form an important part of the communication network that makes research available, prompts discussion, and identifies new issues to resolve.

When searching in journal databases, these strategies will get better results:

*  Truncation:  Shorten search words with an asterisk to get all the forms 
          politic*  will get politics, political, politicians

OR:  Link synonyms with OR and group them with parentheses
          (immigra* OR ethnic*)

AND: Combine topics that you want to see together
           family AND gender* AND (economic* OR work*)

" " Phrase: Use quotation marks to search for words together in that order
          "migrant agricultural laborers"   "birth control"

Focus: Choose where the database is searching.  It may be set automatically for keyword.  You can make the search more precise by looking instead for title words only or for subjects.

Results: Look at the articles retrieved for additional ideas and concepts. Then change your search terms for additional results.

See the Search Tips tab for more information.

Use these journal databases where you can apply a full range of search techniques to find scholarship on your topic.  These include choosing exact terminology, using Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT to define the relationships among search terms, and employing strategies for precise results with nesting, phrase searches, truncation, field searching, and sorting results.  See the Search Tips tab for more details.  

They cover the top-tier journals but will not go into depth in the different subject areas:

Take advantage of  more in-depth coverage of topics with databases focused on a specific academic discipline.

Where to find subject-specific databases?  Check the Research Guides website which outlines the major databases by subject area.  It also includes resource lists for classes and for categories like news and government information.  The Research Guides site can be searched by word or phrase (in quotations) to find specific topics..