POLI SCI Honors Thesis: Find Articles

Core article databases for political science research are below. More databases are available via the Political Science Research Guide.

The Berkeley Library provides access to hundreds of databases, below are some that might be particularly helpful.

• You no longer need to configure a browser to use the Library Proxy.
• When you click on a resource link found in UC Library Search, Databases A-Z or eJournals (UC eLinks), you will be prompted to authenticate. You may authenticate via CalNet, or via your PIN / Cal 1 card number.
• When you click on a resource link found via a search engine or a non-UCB Library webpage, you will need to use a bookmarklet to access the licensed resource.

Sometimes the database you search doesn't link to the fulltext -- it only gives the citation. Click the button to see if Berkeley has it online, and if not, it will check for a print version.  And if we don't have it at all, it lets you request it through Interlibrary Loan.

What if there isn't a button??? Sometimes you find an article in a bibliography, a book or a footnote -- and you want to see if we have it. The Citation Linker searches through our online databases to see if it's available fulltext. If not, it sets up a search for the paper journal in Melvyl. And if we don't have it at Berkeley, it lets you request it through Interlibrary Loan.

Are you focusing on politics outside of the United States? Here are some key resources you may want to consider. More can be found on the subject list, by geographic area.

If an article is relevant to your topic, you want to look at the research it cited (backward citation). But it can also be very helpful to see who has cited it (forward citation). There are several different ways to do this, and the results will overlap --  no single method is comprehensive.

Google Scholar provides forward citations for some articles. It has a broader range of documents included (not just peer reviewed journals, but reports, pre-prints, etc.) and doesn't eliminate self citation or de-duplicate the results.

Web of Science is a vast, multidisciplinary database, which includes the Social Science Citation Index. This index allows you to do a "Cited Reference" search if you select that tab. This will retrieve other articles (from a prestigious list of peer reviewed journals) which have cited the target article, and it also shows the references for the the original article... both forward and backward citation.