LibGuides: Brief Guide to Research in East Asian Studies: Finding Articles

Finding Articles

Journal articles are essential sources for current information on very focused topics. You can find articles in scholarly journals, trade journals, newspapers, and popular magazines. However, very often you will be expected to use articles from scholarly journals (also known as peer-reviewed or refereed journals) for research papers because they must be reviewed by subject experts before they are published. Thus, articles presented in scholarly journals are more authoritative than those in other types of publications.

Below are some examples of databases that index articles in scholarly journals:

Core Databases

Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS)
Find articles, monographs (until 1991), proceedings, and festschriften written in Western languages of all subjects pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia from 1971 to the present.
JSTOR
Digital library of full-text scholarly journals, books, and primary sources. Discover content across a wide range of subjects, including African American studies, anthropology, art, criminal justice, economics, history, literature, political science, psychology, sociology, and women's, gender, and sexuality studies. JSTOR is good for finding and accessing specific articles and books.
JSTOR offers full-text keyword searching across its entire digital library collection, including images and content from articles, books, and pamphlets. Search results default to content licensed or purchased by the UAlbany Libraries, but you can change this setting for your session. JSTOR provides both Basic and some Advanced Search options, to help you find the content they need.
Guide: How To Use JSTOR
Project MUSE
Scholarly journals in literature humanities, social sciences, mathematics, cultural and gender studies from Johns Hopkins University Press. The journal list is available for browsing.
MLA International Bibliography
Find journal articles, books and dissertations published worldwide from the 1920s on literature, language and linguistics.
Historical Abstracts with Full Text
Find full-text, indexed, and abstracted articles covering world history (excluding the United States and Canada) from the 15th century to the present. It includes hundreds of history journals and books, plus useful features such as the ability to search by time period.

Relevant Interdisciplinary Databases

PAIS Index
Find references to books, journal articles, government documents, and privately published research reports on almost any topic that has a public affairs dimension.
Humanities Source
Full-text database covering literary, scholarly and creative thought. It provides full text, indexing and abstracts for the most noted scholarly sources in the humanities.
Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson)
Find full-text articles from hundreds of journals, covering the latest concepts, theories and methods from both applied and theoretical aspects of the social sciences.
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)
Find article citations and abstracts in core and specialized journals and books in the social sciences. Core disciplines covered are anthropology, economics, political science and sociology, with additional coverage in other social science fields. Thirty percent of the records are in languages other than English.
Ethnic NewsWatch
Find current full-text newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press, providing researchers access to essential, often overlooked perspectives. The database now also contains Ethnic NewsWatch: A History, which provides historical coverage of Native American, African American, and Hispanic American periodicals from 1959-1989.

Search Tips

Identify key concepts in your research question and put them in separate search boxes.
Put phrases in quotation marks. For example: "cultural revolution"
Use truncation symbol * at the root of a word to find variations of the search term. For example, if you type connect*, the database will look for connect, connects, connected, connecting, connection, connectivity.
When you find too many records, search one or more key concept in the field of Title, Subject term, or Abstract.
When you find too few records, try to use synonyms of your key concepts in your searches. If you still can not find sufficient records, broaden up your research topic.