LibGuides: Political Science: Articles

Databases for Political Science

These are the best databases we have for research in Health and Nutritional Sciences. There are more options, especially for cross-disciplinary research on the Secondary Databases tab. You can see all of our databases on the Databases A-Z list.

Westlaw Campus Research This link opens in a new window
Westlaw Campus Research is a premier research service for legal, news, and business-related information,

General Databases

CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window
Noted for in-depth, unbiased coverage of health, social trends, criminal justice, international affairs, education, the environment, technology, and the economy. Each issue focuses on one controversial topic and includes an overview, background, chronology, and pro-con debates. Full-text back to 1923.
Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
General multidisciplinary database covering virtually every subject area. Includes full-text peer-reviewed journals, magazines, newspapers, and other sources.
This database is provided by the South Dakota State Library and the Institute of Museum Library Services.
GovInfo.gov This link opens in a new window
Provides free public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government.
SocIndex This link opens in a new window
The database features more than 2.1 million records with subject headings from a 20,000+ term sociological thesaurus. This product also contains extensive indexing for books/monographs, conference papers, and other non-periodical content. Searchable cited references are also provided.
Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new window
Provides access to Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. This database allows very sophisticated searching including cited reference searching.
ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) via EbscoHost This link opens in a new window
The largest education database in the world, containing over 1.6 million records. Includes journal articles, books, conference papers, reports, policy papers, and other education related-materials. Coverage from 1966 to the present. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES).
ERIC Web (Education Resources Information Center) This link opens in a new window
The largest education database in the world, containing over 1.6 million records. Includes journal articles, books, conference papers, reports, policy papers, and other education related-materials. Coverage from 1966 to the present. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES).

In addition to the databases listed above, the following databases can be useful in finding articles and other resources related to health, physical education, and recreation.

Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1861 to the present day, and offering full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997. This database was previously known as Dissertation Abstracts International.
Dissertations & Theses at South Dakota State University This link opens in a new window
Dissertations and theses produced by South Dakota State University students. Not all dissertations and theses are available full-text in this database. Indexing from 1958-2011.
EconLit This link opens in a new window
Published by the American Economic Association and covers a wide range of economics-related literature. Indexes of journals, books and dissertations from 1969.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Focused on literature in psychology and related disciplines. Respected resource from the American Psychological Association (APA). Includes scholarly articles, book chapters, dissertations, book reviews, and editorials. Indexes more than 4 million records and offers extensive coverage from the 1800’s to the present. Allows users to identify document types, research methodologies, tests or assessment instruments, and grant or funding sources.
PsycArticles This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text of nearly 200,000 articles from over 110 journals published by the American Psychological Association (APA) and related organizations. Coverage for APA journals is usually back to volume 1, issue 1. Full-text of articles are also linked to records in PsycINFO which searches a broader range of materials.
Current Contents Connect - Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Complete tables of contents and bibliographic information from the world’s leading scholarly journals. Use Table of Contents alerting to be notified when new issues of relevant journals are available. Content includes Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences, Social & Behavioral Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Life Sciences, Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences, Engineering, Computing & Technology, Arts & Humanities, Business Collection, Electronics & Telecommunications Collection. Coverage from 1998 to present.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Includes more than 1,700 leading academic journals and 45,000 Ebooks in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as other materials valuable for academic work.
ProQuest This link opens in a new window
Provides access to eight bibliographic and full-text databases including the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, Dissertations & Thesis at SDSU, EconLit, Physical Education Index, ProQuest Discovery, ProQuest Dissertations and Thesis and ProQuest Research Library. Coverage includes diverse subjects from popular and scholarly literature. The databases can be search all together or individually.

This is a selective list of journals in political science. You can search for specific journals using the search box below.

Think about where you are searching for articles. Use library databases first, Google Scholar after library databases and end with a basic Google search. Here is an explanation of why.
Think about what type of information you need. Papers and speeches need more academic, research based information and a general interest. For instance, if you see a movie and are curious about a phenomenon or a person, looking it/them up in Wikipedia or on Google might be fine but when writing a paper about the phenomenon or person, you will want reliable, scholarly, in-depth information that you can verify. Here is more information on quality of information.
There are many strategies you can use to narrow, broaden, or refine your search. Check out the Research 101: Search Strategies pages for more information (click the down arrow on the right of the Search Strategies tab to see more information) such as:
- Generating keywords
- Boolean operators (searching with AND, OR, and NOT)
- Subject terms
- Citation searching
- Mining reference lists

Search Alerts

Search alerts allow you to save searches and have them run automatically with the results being sent to you periodically. Check who provides the database you use most often and follow the instructions below.

Ebsco database search alert instructions.

ProQuest database search alert instructions.

Web of Science (Clarivate) database search alert instructions.

If your database is not from Ebsco, ProQuest, or Web of Science, contact your subject librarian for help.

Quick Links

Government Information

SDSU Department of History, Political Science and Philosophy and Religion

Elections and Voting Guide

SDSU Rural Life and Census Data Center

Terminology: Journal/Magazine

Are you confused about the difference between journals and magazines? No problem, here is what to look for to determine which you have.

Journals: Content is written to inform the reader.

Author(s) named and credentials given
Sources cited in the article
Bibliography at the end (often it is long)
Articles report on research or review the current state of a topic
Articles tend to be long
Illustrations are usually graphs and charts and are necessary to understand the text
Few if any advertisements in the journal

Magazines: Content is written to entertain the reader.

Author is often not named
If sources are given, they are not cited entirely
No bibliography
Articles report on events and people, if research is reported, it is not in detail
Articles are short
Illustrations are often in color and are intended to entertain
Lots of advertisements for a wide variety of products

Interlibrary Loan

Although Briggs Library has an extensive collection, you may need items that are not available at the Library. No worries! You can request those articles, books, and other materials through Interlibrary Loan.

Interlibrary Loan

Keep in mind that the process may take from a week to ten days. Start your research early!

Many of our databases have an Interlibrary Loan Request button for articles not available in that particular database. Before submitting the loan request, be sure to check our Journals List for the title of the source or periodical (i.e. New York Times).

Journals List - Find a Journal

For more information on Interlibrary Loan, see our ILL FAQ.

FAQ: Interlibrary Loan