Research Guides: POLS 275: Political Behavior (HC): Locating Journal Articles

Good Starting Points in Law and Political Science

Journal articles provide focused, reliable, and often up-to-date, information and analysis on public issues. Many of these journals use the peer review process, so that submitted work is vetted by scholars in the field and is improved by the author before it is published. The following indexes are the most relevant for finding scholarly journal articles in the field of political science.

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.
HeinOnline
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Provides searchable database of full text legal periodicals and primary documents. Subscribed libraries 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. Coverage for each periodical is from the beginning issue to the most current allowed under contract.
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.
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.

Locating Journal Articles in Subject Specific Databases

Topics can frequently deal with issues beyond the scope of political science. In those cases, use a subject-specific index like the ones below to find pertinent articles with research and analysis in areas including economics, education, law, and sociology.

EconLit
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Provides abstracts to economic journals, 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.
ProQuest Education Database
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A large database of education research, including journal articles, books, reports, and other sources. Similar to ERIC.
PsycINFO
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Provides abstracts of journal articles, book chapters, reports and dissertations. Areas covered include psychology and related disciplines. Covers material published from 1887 to the present.
Includes PsycARTICLES journals.
Sociological Abstracts
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Find journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations and conference papers in the fields of sociology, social work and related disciplines as far back as 1963. Includes Social Services Abstracts journals.
Women's Studies International
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Provides citations and abstracts of journal articles, books, book chapters, newspapers, dissertations and bulletins, in the core areas of women's studies. Subjects include, feminism, women of color, science, health and technology. Includes different women's studies resources. Covers 1972-present.

Group Rallies at the Supreme Court

Protesters at theProtect the Voting Rights Act Rally, Washington D.C., 2013 (Source: F lickr, public domain)

Tracking Citations Forward in Time

Web of Science Citation Databases
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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.

When you connect, open the Basic Search tab and choose the Cited Reference Search.
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 both books and journal articles which cite the title you have entered.