Research Guides: Criminal Justice: Databases for Articles, etc.

Primary Databases for Scholarly Peer-Reviewed Articles

Listed below are several databases for research in criminal justice. The sociology database, SocINDEX, and Sage Journals Online would be the best places to start searching for scholarly peer-reviewed articles. The first database to try is SocINDEX.

SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Contains full text coverage for over 400 "core" journals and another 100 "priority" journals. It also includes full text for over 700 books and 6,000 conference papers.
Sage Journals Online This link opens in a new window
Online access to the full text of over 485 SAGE journals in Business, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Science, Medicine and Technology. The SAGE Full-Text Collections in Communications, Criminology, and Political Science are also available through this platform.
PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive database of citations, abstracts and full-text articles from major psychology journals, books, and dissertations. Journal coverage begins in 1894 and includes international material.

Additional Databases for Research - Scholarly and Popular Databases

The following databases contain scholarly content.

ERIC Resources in Education (EBSCO version) This link opens in a new window
The ERIC Resources in Education database using the EBSCO interface which allows easy import into RefWorks citation manager.
ERIC is a comprehensive database of education research and information. Includes indexing of ERIC documents and over 600 education journals. To check for full text at the Arnold Bernhard Library, click on "Find in a library" and follow the links to our Journal Locator.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
An interdisciplinary archive of over 1,000 scholarly full-text journals. The earliest content dates back to 1665.

The following databases contain only encyclopedia articles or popular news content.

Gale Virtual Reference Library This link opens in a new window
Offers students, researchers, and professionals a wide variety of full-text interdisciplinary electronic reference sources on virtually any subject area to tackle their assignments, papers, projects, and presentations.
US Major Dailies This link opens in a new window
Collection of national newspapers: Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Hints for Searching Databases

Try some of these suggestions to identify better search results.

Start with keywords
Remember the singular and plural of a word may yield different search results, therefore use the * (asterisk symbol) after the root of the word and it will find all words with that root. For example, crim* will find crime, crimes, criminal, criminals, criminology, etc., but note that it will also find Crimea if in the database.
Use these connectors when appropriate: and, or
Use quotes around phrases
Check for database options to limit results, such as language, peer-reviewed, article, etc.
Read abstract of article for a summary
Recognize and incorporate database subject headings
Use Ctrl F to search a word or phrase in an article
.
Click on author's name(s) for their other articles
Use the references or works cited or bibliography to identify additional articles
If there is an HTML or text version of the full article, the references may be hyperlinked