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Looking for Articles in Journals and Magazines

Journals and magazines are important sources of both primary and secondary information and are useful for most research projects.

The search tool now used to provide access to the library catalog, UO Worldcat, provides access to article level records from several databases. When a relevant article is found within the search results in the UO Worldcat catalog, the FindText button may be used to locate the full text of the article, either online, in the library's print collection, or via InterLibrary Loan.

The standard tool used to find or identify articles on a particular topic is the periodical database. Databases can be general or interdisciplinary in nature, covering a wide range of subject areas, or they can be specific to a particular discipline. Periodical databases that also include summaries of articles are often referred to as abstracts.  The UO Libraries subscribe to hundreds of periodical databases, mostly online, but some in print. To make it easy to identify the databases most appropriate for your topic, we've listed indexes by subject area, as well as alphabetically by title (which can be useful when you already know the name of the index you'd like to search).

The following example, which uses the topic of women in Muslim societies, illustrates a common strategy for finding articles.

This guide does not discuss how to find articles in newspapers; see our Finding News Articles guide for a discussion of the process and access tools used in finding articles from newspapers.

Sample Topic: Women in Muslim Societies

1. List the various subject areas that pertain to your topic, e.g.
   • women's and gender studies
   • religious studies
   • sociology
   • anthropology
   
   
2. Determine which databases are appropriate for each of the above disciplines. Use the library's list of guides to find databases in each subject area, then click on the next to a database title for a description of the database, tips on searching, a list of the journal titles indexed, and any restrictions on access to the database.

   Subject Area	Suggested Database	Description
   Women's & Gender Studies	Contemporary Women's Issues	Full-text access to global information on women: journals, newsletters, research reports from non-profit groups, government and international agencies, and fact sheets; includes information on over 150 countries, in such disciplines as sociology, psychology, health, education and human rights .
   Religious Studies	ATLA Religion	A comprehensive database designed to support religious and theological scholarship research. Contains citations from international titles and 13,000 multi-author works in and related to the field of religion. Religion Index One: Periodicals is included in this database, as are references to essays in multi-author works and book reviews. Coverage is from 1949 to the present; database is updated twice a year.
   Anthropology	Anthropology Plus	Indexes articles and essays in all areas of anthropology and archaeology, published in English and other European languages from the 19th century to the present. Updated quarterly.
   Sociology	Sociological Abstracts	The latest research in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. Includes citations since 1963 (abstracts begin in 1974) for articles in over 1,500 journals, conference papers, books, and dissertations. Updated 6 times a year.

   In addition, you could consult a general or interdisciplinary index, such as Academic Search Premier, to get perspectives from a variety of other disciplines. Many of the articles in this particular index are full text, meaning the entire article, including graphics in many cases, is available online.
3. Using the key terms that describe your topic (e.g., women, muslim societies) and appropriate synonyms, search each of these indexes. 
4. Using the information from these indexes, identify articles that may be useful for your research. Be sure to note the following information, which will come in handy at several points during your research:
   • author
   • title
   • source (journal title, volume, issue, date, page numbers)
5. Use or the online catalog to see if we have the journal or magazine in which each article is published. If you can't find it in the UO Libraries, you may need to request it from another library using interlibrary loan (ILL). Many of our online indexes allow you to place your request directly from the database (or you can use the link from the FindText menu).
   
6. Determine if the article is relevant to your topic and/or your assignment; some criteria you might want to use include:
   • type of periodical
   • scholarly or popular?
   • length of article
   • credibility (authority, objectivity, quality, currency, etc.)
7. Finally, don't forget to cite your article properly, using an appropriate bibliographic style.

For further assistance, ask a reference librarian.

Maintained by: Paul Frantz, pfrantz@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 04/08/2011