When looking for academic journal articles you can use the 'everything' search in Library Search or search directly in the databases below, which we’ve selected as being most relevant to your subject area.
Databases are the best place to find academic journal articles as they offer advanced search tools, metric data, and export options for referencing. These databases also often provide access to information types such as conference papers, book chapters, review articles, trade magazines, and more. BrowZine can also be used to explore e-journal titles in your subject.
While most of our collection is now available digitally, some titles may only be accessible in print. You can find these journal titles using an ‘everything except articles’ search in Library Search.
You’ll also find links to essential reading for your programme in your module reading lists on Canvas.
Key Databases and E-journal Collections
Databases will either provide you with the full text of the journal or they will give you the bibliographic details of an article. Where full text is not available, look for the
link and follow this to see if we have the full text available via Library Search.
Subject databases
Subject databases are tailored to particular subject areas. They tend to use precise terminology relating to the subject area, making searches more accurate, and can include subject specific tools and features.
- Bibliography of Asian Studies (Association for Asian Studies) This link opens in a new window
Database containing records on all subjects pertaining to East, Southeast and South Asia, published worldwide from 1971 to the present. Includes citations and the full-text of journal articles, review articles, conference proceedings and chapters in edited volumes.
- British Union of Fascists: Newspapers and Secret Files 1933-1951 This link opens in a new window
This collection charts the rise and fall of fascism in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s, with a particular focus on Oswald Mosley’s blackshirt movement. The bulk of the documents are official BUF publications, including Fascist Week¸ The Blackshirt, The East London Pioneer, and Action. In addition, there are hundreds of Government documents relating to Mosley’s internment during the Second World War, including Cabinet Office, Home Office and Prime Ministerial papers.
- Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports This link opens in a new windowThese reports were the United States' principal record of political and historical intelligence for 70 years. They include translated broadcast transcripts, newspaper reports, and government statements, and cover many regions of the world from 1974-199
- British Labour Party papers, 1968-1994 This link opens in a new windowIncludes minutes of the Party Meetings, the Liaison Committee and the Parliamentary Committee (Shadow Cabinet)
- Policy Commons: Global Think TanksGlobal Think Tanks is a collection of objective, fact-based research from the world’s leading policy experts, think tanks, IGOs and NGOs. It provides in-depth search and access to some 5 million reports from over 25,000 organisations.
- Political Data Yearbook This link opens in a new windowThe yearbook collects election results, national referenda, changes in government, and institutional reforms in 36 countries including all of the EU member states. Users can select to view different types of data in graphical format, customize by adjusting time settings or selecting parties to view, and download full datasets (with footnotes) for use in research.
- UK Parliamentary Papers 1688-2003/4 This link opens in a new windowIncludes over 200,000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688.
- Gender, feminism and the British left, 1944-1991.This collection contains records compiled by the Communist Party of Great Britain's (CPGB) Women's Department during the period 1944-1991. They include minutes, agendas, and promotional materials from various women's campaigns, events, and conferences as well as copies of Link, the party's women's magazine, and Red Rag, a controversial journal published by the party's more militant feminist members.
- News, Policy and Politics Magazine archiveDigital access to the archival runs of 15 major 20th/21st-century consumer magazines covering topics such as the history of politics, current events, public policy, and international relations. Titles include Newsweek, In These Times, Europe, New Internationalist, NATO Review and more.
Multidisciplinary databases
Much like Library Search, multidisciplinary databases cover a wide range of topics and are a great place to scope your search, or to use if your topic covers more than one subject area.
- British Periodicals Online This link opens in a new window
A collection of searchable, full text copies of British periodicals from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the social sciences, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture. Useful for exploring a range of themes, such as popular culture, historic events, literary criticism and reviews, political satire, advertisements, and more.
- CNKI China Academic Journals This link opens in a new window
Searchable database providing full-text access to academic journal articles in Social Sciences and Humanities subject areas from China and beyond. Our subscription covers topics: Literature, History, Philosophy (F), Economics, Politics, Law (G), Education, Social Sciences (H) and Economics/Management (J).
- Oxford University Press Journals This link opens in a new windowSearch journals published by Oxford University Press for a variety of subject areas.
- Science Direct This link opens in a new windowScienceDirect provides full text-access to journal articles published by Elsevier.
- ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection This link opens in a new windowThis collection provides access to databases covering the international literature in the social sciences, including politics, sociology, social services, anthropology, criminology and education. Together, they provide abstracts, indexing and full text coverage of journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, working papers and more. You can search across the whole collection or choose a specific database to retrieve information. Use the thesauri within the databases to identify alternative keywords.
- Scopus This link opens in a new windowScopus is a large, multidisciplinary database, which indexes peer reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters, conference proceedings and trade publications. It provides cited reference searching, so you can navigate forward and backward through the literature to uncover all the information relevant to your research and set up citation alerts. Other useful tools include citation overviews, author and affiliation searching, visual analysis of search results and a journal analyser and author identifier tools (if you are interested in publishing work).
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowWeb of Science is a multidisciplinary database, which indexes scholarly journal articles, books, book chapters and conference proceedings. It provides cited reference searching, so you can navigate forward and backward through the literature to uncover all the information relevant to your research. Use citation reports to see citation activity and geographical trends and the ‘analyse results’ tool to identify trends and publication patterns.
- SAGE Research Methods CasesA collection of case studies showing the challenges and successes of doing research, written by the researchers themselves. They explain why the researchers chose the methods they did, how they overcame problems in their research and what they might have done differently with hindsight. Cases are peer-reviewed and cover a range of disciplines including social sciences, science, arts, technology and medicine.
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