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Sociology Research: A Guide for Graduate Students: Find Articles

Selecting the Best Databases

Your topic will determine which are the best subject databases for you. For example, if you are doing a study on gun violence on college campuses, you would use the databases listed under Education (for journals talking about higher education) and Criminal Justice (for journals that discuss crime and gun violence).

Library Proxy: Off-Campus Access

When you are doing research from off-campus, you will be prompted to log in to electronic resources with your UCCS username and password. This is just like logging into Canvas.

Click here if you experience problems accessing resources from off campus.

ILLiad: Interlibrary Loan for Journal Articles

No UCCS holdings for your article?

ILLiad: Interlibrary Loan

Request that the article be delivered to you as a PDF by using ILLiad (Interlibrary Loan). This usually takes a few days - or less!

Subject Specific Databases

The databases you use will depend on your topic. The following links are popular databases in the sociology.

General Databases

General databases cover a wide range of topics and should include your topic.

More databases are listed on the General Database page.

What is a Scholarly Journal Article?

If your professor told you to use scholarly, or peer-reviewed, sources for your assignment, you need to find an article published in a peer-reviewed journal. Use a library search tools to locate articles, then check them for the following features:

checkmarkIs this an article that was published in a journal? (Hint: Look near the bottom or top of the page for a journal name, volume number, issue number, year and page numbers.)

Does the article tell you where the author works (and maybe their contact details)? (Hint: Look for footnotes by the author's name.)

Is there an abstract at the beginning of the article? (A summary of the article, written by the authors.)

Does the article end with a bibliography or list of works cited? (There could also be extensive footnotes.)

Is the language in the article more technical than a typical magazine or newspaper?

Does the article's formatting look really boring? (No advertisements or glossy color pictures.)

If you answered YES to most of these questions, the article you're looking at is probably scholarly!