LibGuides: Sociology Research: Finding Articles

Why use periodical articles?

Articles that appear in periodicals--such as newspapers, magazines, or scholarly journals--are good resources to use in your research. You can use periodical articles to support an argument, to explain a topic, or to provide additional perspectives on an issue.

Why do I have to use a database to find an article?

The library subscribes to databases to provide access to periodical articles. The content contained in these databases are typically not freely available on the internet. You have to pay to get access to them. But with an article database, the library is paying for that access for you. That's why you have to go through the database to get the articles.

Don't ever pay to download an article from the internet--talk to a librarian, and we can more than likely get you a copy of the article at no charge to you. That's what libraries do!

Databases

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Provides access to thousands of scholarly journals in all disciplines, as well as magazines and newspapers. Coverage dates from 1975 to the present.
APA PsycARTICLES This link opens in a new window
Contains many full-text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in psychology relevant to sociology, from 1985 to the present.
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) This link opens in a new window
National information system which provides access to education resources,many dealing with social problems. It includes access to information from journals included in Current Index to Journals in Education and the ERIC document collections and provides links to many of these articles.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Provides access to citations and some full-text of scholarly articles on the open web.
ACCESS NOTE: To access IUS subscribed-to resources from off-campus, go to the Google Scholar Preferences menu and under the heading "Library Links," search for "Indiana University Southeast." You will then be asked to log in using your IUS username and password. From there, you should be able to access all articles that are available through IUS subscriptions.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Provides the searchable full-text of historical runs of important scholarly journals in the humanities, arts, sciences, and business. Access for most journals include issues from Vol. 1 No. 1 to 3-5 years ago.
OneSearch This link opens in a new window
OneSearch provides access to the majority of the IU Southeast Library's resources. Rather than searching in IUCAT for books, Academic Search Premier or JSTOR for peer-reviewed journal articles, and Gale Virtual Reference Library for encyclopedia entries, you can do one search in OneSearch and retrieve results for all types of materials. OneSearch provides access to journal, magazine, and newspaper articles, books and e-books, government documents, DVDs and streaming videos, and more. The default search in OneSearch will return only items that are either available through an IU Southeast subscribed database or are available in the IU Southeast Library; however, you can modify this to include citations and abstracts as well (using the Limiters on the results page).
ACCESS NOTE: For non-IU Southeast students, faculty, and staff, guest access to OneSearch is available here: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=guest&custid=iuse&groupid=main&profile=eds
Professional Development Collection This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text articles, many dealing with sociology topics in education, high quality education journals, including peer-reviewed titles.
PsycARTICLES This link opens in a new window
Now called APA PsycARTICLES.
Social Theory This link opens in a new window
Contains a range of influential works reflecting the major trends of sociological thought from the eighteenth century to the present. Content includes works by such theorists as Harriet Martineau, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Max Weber, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Jürgen Habermas, Talcott Parsons, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard.
SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Provides comprehensive coverage of sociology, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study. These include criminal justice, ethnic & racial studies, gender studies, marriage & family, religion, social work, sociological theory, violence and many others.

Academic, Peer Reviewed, Scholarly

Q - How do I know if it is a scholarly article?

A - Most databases have a checkbox to limit your results to scholarly articles. However, sometimes editorials and book reviews can pop up because they are contained in these journals as well. The quick and easy way to check is to ask if it looks like a research paper. Are there sources listed in a bibliography or footnotes. Is there a Methods section? If in doubt, ask a Librarian or your Instructor.

Q - What is peer-review?

When experts in the field, such as sociology, serve on an editorial board to read and review new articles that are submitted to the journal. Usually an article will have three independent reviewers. They evaluate the article to see if it is valuable new knowledge to be added to the field of their discipline. Sometimes authors (scholars) must re-submit their work with edits, sometimes they are referred to another journal, sometimes they are rejected.

By the time an article gets published in a scholarly, academic, peer-reviewed or refereed (all of these are synonyms) journal, it has been through a rigorous review process, so we trust the authority of the information as being valid. Often times journalists will refer to scholarly journals in magazines and newspapers, because they have authority in a discipline.