Students new to academic research can be confused about the nature of journals and articles because, in everyday conversation, the terms can seem interchangeable. However, the distinction matters when searching library databases.
A journal is a single publication; an article is an individual work published within a journal. A journal contains many articles written by different authors, usually published in separate issues over time.
For example, the open access journal Humanities & Social Sciences Communications is an interdisciplinary journal published by Springer Nature. The latest articles published in this journal can be found here.
You can search for the title of a journal in the library catalog, in the same way you would look for the title of a book.
If you have a citation for a specific article, check to see if your library has an online citation search tool or an article finder tool where you can copy and paste in the article title.
EBSCO is a major research database platform that allows users to search multiple EBSCO databases simultaneously. The difference between EBSCOhost and Academic Search is that Academic Search can be searched as part of the EBSCOhost platform or searched separately if your institution has a subscription. To check if your institution subscribes to EBSCOhost, use EBSCO’s Find your institution page.
ProQuest is a major database vendor and platform that provides access to hundreds of database collections. The ProQuest platform provides a multidisciplinary search with access to scholarly ebooks, journals, video and audio, newspapers, and more, all searchable simultaneously. ProQuest is unique in providing dissertations and theses, historical newspapers, and other primary sources.
Scholarly research databases provide peer-reviewed academic journal articles, book reviews, and other scholarly resources authored by scholars, researchers, or academics who are experts in their fields.
Unlike magazines, which focus on current events and general-interest stories, articles in scholarly journals undergo rigorous peer review before publication. The following is a list of the most important multidisciplinary scholarly research databases.
Google Scholar is a free academic search engine that helps researchers and students find scholarly literature across disciplines. It indexes journal articles, books, conference papers, theses, patents, and other resources from academic publishers, universities, and professional organizations.
The International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), compiled by the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics, provides access to a vast collection of scholarly literature in the social sciences. Covering multiple disciplines, IBSS includes references to journal articles, books, newspapers, and dissertations, with records dating back to 1951.
JSTOR is an important scholarly research database for the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. It provides the full text of articles from thousands of influential academic journals. In addition to journal articles, users can access eBooks, book chapters, images, and primary source documents. JSTOR also provides an AI research tool that provides key points and arguments of articles.
JSTOR contains the full text of more than 2,000 journals from 1,000 publishers, with publication dates ranging from 1665 to 2015 (for certain titles). JSTOR also provides:
Project MUSE offers online access to a vast collection of scholarly journals, books, and academic resources in the humanities, social sciences, and arts. As a leading provider of digital humanities content, it features high-quality, peer-reviewed publications from prestigious university presses, scholarly societies, and academic publishers.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses is a database of dissertations and theses from universities worldwide. It provides access to millions of full-text works across many disciplines, including the social sciences, humanities, sciences, and business. Each dissertation includes an abstract or summary that provides a concise overview of the research, its methodology, and key findings.
ScienceDirect is a leading full-text scholarly scientific database that provides journal articles and book chapters from more than 2,500 peer-reviewed journals and more than 11,000 books. It covers over 24 major subjects in the physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, health sciences, social sciences, and the humanities.
Social Sciences Full Text provides access to a wide range of scholarly literature in the social sciences. It covers many disciplines, including sociology, psychology, international relations, political science, anthropology, economics, and education.
Web of Science is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary research and citation index that provides access to a wide range of scientific, technical, social science, and humanities research. It maintains rigorous criteria for the journals and publications it indexes, ensuring that only high-quality, peer-reviewed content is included. Web of Science includes 98 million papers dating back to 1900.
Subject-specific databases are specialized databases that provide access to scholarly articles, journals, books, and other academic content related to a particular field or discipline. These databases meet the needs of researchers who require in-depth information in a specific area of study. Each general subject guide has a subject-specific section for databases.
Google Scholar is an important academic research database that helps you locate articles. However, while some articles found with Google Scholar are freely available, most require a subscription or payment. Google Scholar Library Links are customized to provide links to electronic journal holdings and other resources available in participating academic libraries.
You can check to see if your library participates in the Google Scholar Library Links program by doing the following:
When using your library’s resources on campus, Google Scholar links are usually set up to link to your subscription resources. However, if you are off campus, you may need to set up Library Links manually. Choose your library from the list given and click Save. The following quick video shows the process.
After you set up Google Scholar, you’ll see Find full-text@ links to the right of the results as seen below. Some links are hidden at the bottom of the results and require you to click the blue double arrows underneath the citation to the right.
