O'Malley Library: Political Science: Scholarly Articles

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Journal List

Databases

Criminal Justice Collection This link opens in a new window
Criminal Justice Collection reforms the research process for researchers who are: studying law or law enforcement, training for paralegal service, preparing for a career in Homeland Security, delving into forensic science, investigating crime scenes, developing policy, going to court, writing sociological reports.
Criminal Justice Database This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive database supporting research on crime, its causes and impacts, legal and social implications, as well as litigation and crime trends. As well as U.S. and international scholarly journals, it includes correctional and law enforcement trade publications, crime reports, crime blogs and other material relevant for researchers or those preparing for careers in criminal justice, law enforcement and related fields.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Academic equivalent of Google search, with links to the full text of journals held by our library. Includes some content not available through the standard version of Google.
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
HeinOnline bridges the gap in historical research by providing comprehensive coverage from inception of more than 2,300 law-related periodicals. In addition to its vast collection of law journals, HeinOnline contains the entire Congressional Record, Federal Register, and Code of Federal Regulations, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, and entire databases dedicated to treaties, constitutions, case law, world trials, classic treatises, international trade, foreign relations, U.S. Presidents, and much more.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR stands for Journal Storage and is an electronic archive of leading journals across many academic disciplines. Subscribed collections include Arts & Sciences I - VIII, Ireland, and Life Sciences. There are embargos of between 3-5 years for most journal titles.
Military and Intelligence Database This link opens in a new window
Provides access to scholarly journals, magazines, and reports covering all aspects of the past and current state of military affairs. The database offers content in key subject areas including governmental policies, the socioeconomic effects of war, the structure of the armed forces, and more.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic) includes more than 15,000 news, legal and business sources, including: journals, television and radio broadcasts,newswires and blogs; local, regional, national and international newspapers with deep archives; extensive legal sources for federal and state cases and statutes, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 1790; business information on more than 80 million U.S. and international companies and more than 75 million executives.
Political Science Database This link opens in a new window
From ProQuest. Over 500 journals covering all aspects of government and political science
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive international bibliographic database of psychology. It contains citations and summaries of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, books, dissertations, and technical reports, all in the field of psychology and the psychological aspects of related disciplines, such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business, and law.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Delivering a comprehensive overview of the world's research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities, Scopus features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Abstracts and indexes the international literature of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from thousands of serials publications and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, conference papers and working papers.

How to Read Academic Articles

Reading scholarly articles is challenging. Follow these tips as you peruse your articles.

Start by examining the structure and format of the article. Most scholarly, peer-reviewed articles have the same or similar structure. Many contain data and findings.

Abstract (summary of the whole article
Introduction (why they did the research)
Methodology (how they did the research)
Results (what happened; identify the findings)
Discussion (what the results mean)
Conclusion (what they learned)
References (whose research they read)

Read the abstract and conclusion first, as these have the main points.
Read the discussion next. This will give you a longer report on the findings and their implications.
At this point, if you're sure the article has what you need, start at the beginning and read the whole thing through, taking notes as you go.

Taking Notes on Scholarly Articles

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How to Read Academic Articles