Articles - GU-Q INAF 100-75 Proseminar - Language and Identity - LibGuides at Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service in Qatar

Finding Articles - Introduction to Library Databases

Where to Start?

Important Concept - Authority

Question: why don't we just go to Google?

Answer: because we want information from proven experts not amateurs.

Note: the phrase peer-reviewed journal articles is important. It means that a journal article has gone through a rigorous review process by scholars in their field of study. You want to avoid articles that are not peer-reviewed, like popular magazines and many online sources (e.g. blogs, message boards, personal websites, etc.)

Multidisciplinary full-text research database

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Full-text publications from all academic areas of study, including the sciences, social sciences, humanities, education, computer science, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Full text (in PDF format) of selected, important scholarly journals in a number of fields. Note: journals in JSTOR usually do not include the most recent three to five years.
OmniFile Full Text Mega This link opens in a new window
Full-text and abstracted publications from all academic areas of study, including the sciences, art, education, humanities, law, social sciences and technology. Contains publications dating from 1982 to the present.
Project Muse This link opens in a new window
Provides access to scholarly journals in the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics and many others. Full text is available for titles marked with a green arrow.

Other databases with a focus on linguistics

Bibliography of Linguistic Literature / Bibliographie Linguistischer Literatur (BLLDB) This link opens in a new window
BLLDB is the online version of the "Bibliography of Linguistic Literature / Bibliographie Linguistischer Literatur (BLL)". It is a major source of information for general linguistics with all its neighbouring disciplines and subdomains as well as English, German and Romance linguistics. Other languages are also covered to a smaller extent. The bibliography lists journal articles, articles of conference proceedings, and other collective works as well as monographs, dissertations, and Festschrifts.
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) This link opens in a new window
Citations to international scholarly journal articles, books, and dissertations on language and linguistics, speech, and communication. Particularly strong in applied and descriptive linguistics and psycholinguistics.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Cumulates five databases:
Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI)
Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science (CPCI-S)
Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)
Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED)
Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)
In addition to the traditional author, title, and keyword searches, the citation databases offer access to articles' cited references (from authors' bibliographies). You may take a known, relevant paper and find other, more recent papers that cite it.