Finding Articles at BCC Libraries
BCC Libraries offer a variety of databases in which you can locate magazine, newspaper, trade, and scholarly journal articles. The databases below have been chosen especially for research for SOC101.
How to Read a Scholarly Article
Image "Reading a Scholarly Article" published by Brandeis Library (CC by NC-SA).
Recommended Databases
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Academic OneFile (Gale)Multi-disciplinary database containing mostly peer-reviewed, scholarly articles from the world's leading journals and reference sources. Over 8,000 academic journal titles are included with extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and many other subjects. Also includes hundreds of podcasts and transcripts from NPR, CNN, and CBC, as well as full text New York Times content back to 1995. Coverage 1964 – present.
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Academic Search PremierOne of the largest academic multi-disciplinary databases, providing indexing and abstracting for over 8,000 periodicals. Full text is provided for more than 4,650 of these titles with over 3,590 of these being peer-reviewed, scholarly journals. Searchable, cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles. Coverage: 1975 (over 100 journals) – present.
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CQ Researcher (Plus Archive)A database of in-depth, authoritative reports on a full range of political and social-policy issues extending back to 1923. Each report is footnoted and includes an overview, background section, chronology, bibliography and debate-style pro-con feature, plus tools to study the evolution of the topic over time.
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Credo ReferenceProvides full-text online versions of hundreds of top quality reference books in all major subjects from art to medicine, psychology to history, and technology to literature. Includes bilingual and biographical dictionaries.
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Global Issues In Context (Gale)Offers international viewpoints on a broad spectrum of global issues, topics, and current events. Featured are hundreds of continuously updated issue and country portals that bring together a variety of specially selected, highly relevant sources for analysis of social, political, military, economic, environmental, health, and cultural issues.
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Psychology and Behavioral Sciences CollectionProvides nearly 575 full text publications, including 550 peer-reviewed journals and many indexed and abstracted references to articles. Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection covers topics such as emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry & psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational and experimental methods. Nearly every full text title included in this database is indexed in PsycINFO. Coverage: 1965 – Present.
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SocINDEXSocINDEX with Full Text offers coverage from all subdisciplines of sociology, including abortion, criminology & criminal justice, demography, ethnic & racial studies, gender studies, marriage & family, political sociology, religion, rural & urban sociology, social development, social psychology, social structure, social work, socio-cultural anthropology, sociological history, sociological research, sociological theory, substance abuse & other addictions, violence, and many others.
What is Peer Reviewed?
Why should I look for academic articles?
Why should you do research in academic journals?
- Academic journal articles are often authored by scholars active in a particular field
- Academic journal articles provide a close look at a particular topic
- Academic journal articles often provide data to support their findings
- Academic journal articles can lead readers to other sources through their bibliographies
If you find one good article that supports your research, you can use the bibliography at the end of the paper to locate further research.
Boolean Operators
Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT):
- Use AND to narrow your search. For example, using "adolesence AND anxiety" will find articles with both terms, giving your more specific results.
- Use OR to broaden your results, such as using "adolesence OR teen" will find articles with either term, giving you more results.
- Use NOT to filter out results with terms you don't need. For example "adolescence NOT child" will filter out articles with the term "child".
Truncation (*): The "*" replaces any number of characters and will find all forms of a word root. For example, "therap*" will find therapies, therapies, therapist, therapists, theraputic, therapeutically, etc.
Wildcard (#): The "#" replaces extra charactors that may appear in alternative spellings. For example, "colo#r" finds both color and colour.
Wildcard (?): The "?" replaces one character. For example, "ne?t" finds neat, nest, or next, but will not find not.
Phrase (" "): Enclosing two or more words in quotation marks " " tells the database to look for those words in that exact order, without other words in between. Most, but not all, databases recognize this command.