LibGuides: SOC 226: Women & Gender Issues: Journal

Where to Begin

The databases listed to the right will lead you to journal articles on the women and gender issues.

A good starting point: Gender Studies.

Image: Mother, son. Jason Regan. CC BY 2.0. Wikimedia Commons.

How Do I Find Full-Text?

Find

If your topic deals with a particular subject area (business, music, etc.), you may also find information on gender and women's issues in subject specific databases--for example, Business Source Elite, CINAHL (health) Education Full-Text, EconLit, Music Index.

Academic Search Premier
Searches journal articles in many fields, including Women's Studies. Full-text and citations/abstracts.
Gender Studies Database
Covers gender-engaged scholarship along with sexual diversity issues. Indexed articles are from various sources, such as professional journals, conference papers, books, government reports, and theses & dissertations.
Social Sciences Full Text
Social Sciences Full Text covers the social sciences. Indexes over 625 journals; nearly 400 are peer-reviewed. Provides full-text articles and citations/abstracts.
PsycINFO
Covers the psychological literature from the 1800s to the present. Mostly citations/abstracts; some full-text.
Google Scholar
Searches many subject areas for scholarly literature-- peer-reviewed articles, as well as theses and books. It should never be the only database you search; rather, use it to supplement more comprehensive and authoritative databases provided by Bishop Library.

Identify a Scholarly Journal Article

Summon Search: Women's Studies

Summon is a discovery search tool that you can use to begin your research or to find additional resources. Summon does not search everything the library has access to; it should not be used exclusively. It can, however, be a valuable additional resource.

Use the customized Summon search box below to search for scholarly journal articles in Women's Studies.

How Can I Tell?

Almost all of the library's databases will allow you to limit to academic/scholarly, or peer-reviewed journals. Limiting to academic/scholarly, however, is imperfect: You'll also retrieve professional journals. Some professors consider these scholarly; others don't.

Ask to clarify.

How can you tell what it is you found? You'll need to look for clues. None of these clues may be consistently applied--taken together, however, they can get you close.

Journal in the journal title. You can't apply this clue blindly-- Ladies' Home Journal is not scholarly.

Subject specific terminology or language within the article title.

High page numbers. Typically scholarly journals continuously paginate January through December. Thus, after the publication of the first volume, you'll see high page numbers. This is an important clue--probably the one you can count on most. Still, imperfect.

References or Works Cited within the article. Again, imperfect. Look for other clues.

Abstract is contained within the article (useful only if you can pull up the full-text of the article) Again, imperfect.

Authors identified within the article as having come from a university, college, or research facility. Imperfect. Look for other clues.

Still unsure? Check Ulrich's Periodicals Directory for the definitive word on whether your source is scholarly or general.

Image source: Syker Fotograf. GNU GPL. Wikimedia Commons.