LibGuides: Philosophy & Religion: Articles

Databases of Philosophy & Religion Research

These are the best databases we have for research in Philosophy and Religion. 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.

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Academic Search Complete is the world's most valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,400 journals.
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.
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.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index - Web of Science (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary index to the journal literature of the arts and humanities. It fully covers over 1,600 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals. It also indexes individually selected, relevant items from over 6,000 major science and social science journals. Publication years: 1975 to present
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text/image access to articles from more than 150 scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics from many of the world’s leading university presses and scholarly societies.
ARTstor This link opens in a new window
Artstor is now on JSTOR. The Artstor website was retired on August 1, 2024. This link will now redirect to Artstor on JSTOR.

Provides access to more than one million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences. Search for images by keyword, title, creator, geography, classification, collection, and date.
French 17 This link opens in a new window
Provides an annual survey of research in seventeenth-century French studies, including literary history and criticism, bibliography, linguistics and language, politics, society, philosophy, science, religion and the arts. Includes summaries of articles, books, and book reviews. Online access: 1993 (number 41) to 2015 (number 63). Briggs Library has numbers 32-62 in print. (Upper Level PQ241.A11 F74)
Oxford Journals This link opens in a new window
The Oxford Journals online collection includes over 170 titles. Some of the subjects covered include: Life Sciences, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, Medicine, Social Sciences, Humanities and Law. The benefit of utilizing the online version of the Oxford Journals is the ability to access finished manuscripts of journals before they are released in print.

Dissertations & Theses Global (ProQuest) 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 (ProQuest) 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.
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.
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.
Sage Journals Collection This link opens in a new window
This comprehensive bibliographic and full text database includes more than 645 journals. Topics covered include the humanities, social sciences, medicine, and science and technology.
Wiley Online Library This link opens in a new window
Wiley Online Library includes access to over 1500 peer-reviewed journals, over 10,000 online books, and hundreds of reference works, laboratory protocols, and databases and is one of the world's most extensive multidisciplinary collections of online resources, covering life, health, social and physical sciences, and humanities.

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

Journal/Article Alerts

Most databases allow you to create free accounts for that database or provider. For example Ebsco, ProQuest, and JSTOR all allow you to make an account that will work on all databases in that system. Once you create an account, you can save articles for later access, save searches, and have the database automatically run the search periodically and send you new articles that meet the search criteria. This is a great way to keep current on a particular topic.

Quick Links

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).