LibGuides: Elizabeth's Reusable Content: Articles

Databases for Sociology Research

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

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.
Social Sciences Citation Index - Web of Science This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary index to the journal literature of the social sciences. It fully covers over 2,900 journals across 50 social sciences disciplines. It also indexes individually selected, relevant items from over 3,500 of the world's leading scientific and technical journals. Coverage from 1969 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.

National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts
Covers criminal justice, juvenile justice, and substance abuse resources housed in the NCJRS Library collection. Includes over 210,000 summaries of Federal, State, and local government reports, books, research reports, journal articles, documents, and unpublished research. Documents date from the 1960's to the present. Federally funded resource sponsored by U.S. Dept. of Justice and Executive Office of the President. Updated weekly.

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.

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.

These databases are divided into general databases and related subject databases.

General databases are good for doing fairly basic cross-disciplinary research.
Subject databases are good for finding research on your topic from fields other than yours.

General Databases

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.
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.
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.
EBSCO MegaFILE This link opens in a new window
Combined search of Academic Search Premier, Business Source Premier and Regional Business News databases. Include magazine and journal articles, biographies, primary source documents, company profiles, photos, and maps. Some content back to 1800s.
This database is provided by the South Dakota State Library and the Institute of Museum Library Services.
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.

Subject Databases

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.
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.

Homeland Security Digital Library
Over 100,000 documents relating to homeland security from the federal, state and local governments as well as non-profits and private entities.

Agricola - Ebsco This link opens in a new window
Over 4.8 million citations covering all aspects of agriculture from the National Library of Agriculture. Coverage goes back to 1970 and includes journal articles, books, theses, patents, software, and technical reports.

Open Knowledge Repository
Open access repository for the World Bank's research outputs and knowledge products. Contains more than 13,000 research documents.

Get a list of online and print journals SDSU currently does or in the past did subscribe to:

Journals in Music

You can also search for a specific journal by title in the search below:

SocIndex Search Alerts

Ebsco allows you to save searches and have them run automatically with the results being sent to you periodically.

View a tutorial on how to set up a "search alert" here. Note that this video tutorial uses Flash so it may not work on mobile devices.

This tutorial is also available in a PowerPoint presentation.

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.

Keep in mind that the process may take several days for articles and ebooks and longer for print books. We encourage you to 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).