Library Guides: SOC 119: Race and Ethnic Relations: Find Scholarly Journal Articles

What is a Scholarly Journal Article?

Scholarly journal articles are some of the best types of sources to use in your research paper. Scholarly journal articles are academic articles that present an expert's research (the expert is often a professor at a university). They differ from popular magazine and newspaper articles in several ways. Please open the document below to see the differences between these two types of publications.

Scholarly vs. Popular Articles

How to Read & Use Scholarly Articles

Scholarly articles can be intimidating to read and dissect for your college level papers! Use the links below for tips on where to find different pieces of information and how to best approach reading a lengthy peer reviewed, scholarly article.

Anatomy of a Scholarly Article

How to Read a Scientific Paper

Scholarly vs. Popular Articles Video

General Search Tools

Your best bet for finding scholarly journal articles on your topic is LionSearch--it has a little bit of everything in it.

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Easy to use as Google, but finds mainly scholarly materials!
Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Once you set your institutional preferences, links to full-text, if available at Penn State, should appear.

Can't Find Enough in LionSearch? Try These Subject-Specialty Search Tools

Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
discrimination in the work place, pay inequality, housing & racism
An essential article database for business research providing the full text for more than 2,000 periodicals, including about 1,000 scholarly journals. Covers virtually all disciplines in business and economics, including: accounting, economics, econometrics, finance, marketing, management, MIS, QMM and supply chain management.
PsycINFO (via ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
psychology topics like stereotyping, fear, bigotry, motivations, interracial relationships, adoption
PsycINFO provides access to international literature in psychology and related disciplines. Unrivaled in its depth of psychological coverage and respected worldwide for its high quality, the database is enriched with literature from an array of disciplines related to psychology such as psychiatry, education, business, medicine, nursing, pharmacology, law, linguistics, and social work. Nearly all records contain nonevaluative summaries, and all records from 1967 to the present are indexed using the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts This link opens in a new window
politics, government, Trump
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts is building on the merged backfiles of Political Science Abstracts, published by IFI / Plenum, 1975-2000, and ABC POL SCI, published by ABC-CLIO, 1984-2000. The database provides citations, abstracts, and indexing of the international serials literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration / policy. The serials list of the new database is actively under construction, with a focus on expanding international coverage. As of February 2004 approximately 1,432 titles are being monitored for coverage; this list will continue to grow.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
race and society
CSA Sociological Abstracts abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,700 serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. Records added after 1974 contain in-depth and nonevaluative abstracts of journal articles.
Social Services Abstracts This link opens in a new window
adoption, welfare policies, social work, families, government programs, disability support
This database provides bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development. Coverage is from 1979 to date.
Communication & Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new window
hate speech, bilingualism, minorities in film and TV
CMMC incorporates CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association) and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Penn State) along with numerous other journals to create a research and reference resource of unprecedented scope and depth in the communication and mass media fields.

ERIC (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
education, diversity in colleges, sexual assaults in college
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is the major database for education literature, sponsored by the U.S. Department. of Education. The same database content is available on many platforms.
ScienceDirect (Elsevier full text journal articles and electronic books) This link opens in a new window
racism and gender bias in STEM fields
This system provides access to the electronic versions of the Elsevier journals and books that we subscribe to. Current issues and back files are included. Currently, it includes more than 1,200 journals. The full text collection contains over 1.5 million articles and book chapters from 1995 to present across all fields of science.
Criminal Justice Abstracts This link opens in a new window
racial profiling, policing, police brutality, terrorism, laws, prisons, crime, death penalty
Provides abstracts of articles from the major journals in criminology and related disciplines, as well as books and reports from government and nongovernmental agencies. For each document, an informative summary of the findings, methodology, and conclusions is provided. Topics include crime trends, prevention projects, corrections, juvenile delinquency, police, courts, offenders, victims, and sentencing.
ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials This link opens in a new window
religion and race, Islamaphobia
ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials combines the premier index to journal articles, book reviews, and collections of essays in all fields of religion with ATLA's online collection of major religion and theology journals. The ATLA Religion Database includes more than 488,000 article citations from more than 1,500 journals (506 currently indexed), more than 215,000 essay citations from over 15,700 multi-author works, and more than 446,000 book review citations. This database begins in 1949 although indexing for some journal titles extends back into the nineteenth century. This database is produced by the American Theological Library Association.
America: History & Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
history topics like slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, women's suffrage
Search for articles on all aspects of the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Articles from national, state and local historical journals are covered, as well as historical articles in major humanities and social science journals. Also includes citations to reviews, books, and dissertations. Keywords: African-American, Afro-American, Black, Hispanic, Latino, Colonial, Pennsylvania, Native Americans, women, gender, revolution, revolutionary war, civil war, Vietnam War, Cold War, World War I, World War II, Immigration, Immigrants, labor, agriculture, culture, society, politics, religion, economic, military, historiography.