Furman University home page
POL 150: Intro to Political Analysis - Culclasure: Find Articles
Best Bets for Articles in Political Science
These databases below are your best bets for finding quality journal articles in the field of Political Science.
Scholarly, or Refereed journals are best represented in these first two resources. Keep in mind that JSTOR, a wonderful storage for articles, does not include the most recent 3-5 years of a Journal's articles. Also it has a poor search and retrieval engine, and almost anything published after 1968 in JSTOR will be found much more easily by searching through Humanities Fulltext . Click the purple FUlltext button in the results and you will be linked to anything that happens to be in JSTOR.
- Academic Search PremierAcademic Search Premier is an interdisciplinary database, covering a broad range of subjects. It contains indexing for 8,172 publications, with full text for nearly 4,700 of those titles.
- Annual Review of Political ScienceIn publication since 1998, covers significant developments in the field of Political Science including political theory and philosophy, international relations, political economy, political behavior, American and comparative politics, public administration and policy, and methodology.
- Worldwide Political Science AbstractsProvides searching of the international literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration / policy.
Google Scholar
Get results at Furman through Google Scholar. Choose Preferences.
Literature Review Video
Video courtesy North Carolina State University
Is it Refereed?
"Refereed" (also called "peer-reviewed) means that the articles in the journal are evaluated by a group of experts in the field. These experts must approve the articles before they are allowed to be published. These publications have a much higher level of scholarship and are far more trustworthy than non-refereed journals or magazines.
To increase the likelihood that the articles you find are from refereed journals, use the limit box in the database you're searching. For example:
To CONFIRM that your journal article is from a refereed publication after you already have it, check UlrichsWeb for this symbol next to the journal title:
Improve Your Search
Want to make your searching even better AND faster? Check out these short videos below.
- Boolean OperatorsHow to use Boolean Operators to improve your search. (2:20)
- NestingIt's not just for the birds! How to use nesting to group keywords to keep your results relevant. (0:41)
- Truncat*Tired of trying to think of all the many ways to say the same word? Truncate it! (0:33)
- WildcardsLearn how to use wildcards for better searching, especially in international literature. (0:26)