We subscribe to thousands of journals, which gives you access to fundamental research in a subject as well as the latest findings. Databases are really useful when searching for journal articles - they search across lots of journals at the same time and their search engines are more powerful than Library Search. They are trustworthy, scholarly sources with clear citation information. You may need to search across multiple databases to find a broader range of literature.
If you want to know more using databases, you can try the tutorial to the right, book a one-to-one with your subject librarian or attend a workshop. The following databases may be useful for your subject:
Multidisciplinary databases do not include research on a specific topic. This makes them particularly useful for subjects that span several disciplines. Depending on your area of research, the databases for Sociology or Politics students might also be of interest to you.
The International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) is an essential online resource for social science and interdisciplinary research. IBSS includes journal articles and to books, reviews and selected chapters dating back to 1951. It is unique in its broad coverage of international material and incorporates over 100 languages and countries.
Scopus includes references to journal articles, conference proceedings and books relating to science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts & humanities.
International literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.
Search the world’s leading scholarly journals, books, and proceedings in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.
Includes: Science Citation Index; Social sciences Citation Index; Arts and Humanities Citation Index; Arts and Humanities Citation Index; Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science; Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Social Science & Humanities.
These databases index materials produced by those who create or seek to influence policy. This includes Governments, charities, think tanks and NGOs.
Eldis provides free access to relevant, up-to-date and diverse research on international development issues. Eldis is hosted by the Institute of Development Studies.
NB: This database can be browsed on campus without signing into the Overton site. Off campus, users need to register on the Overton registration page with their @bristol.ac.uk email address. Overton allows users to discover policy documents in 180 countries and explore their links to each other and to the academic research that has informed them. Overton indexes work from governments, universities, IGOs, NGOs, research funders, publishers and think tanks to understand their role in the policymaking landscape. Users can track the evolution of ideas all the way from academic and think tank research to government reports and legislation.
Use Policy Commons to discover and follow high-quality policy research from 210 countries and territories produced by world’s leading policy experts, charities, think tanks, IGOs and NGOs. Includes publications from inactive organisations that may not be available elsewhere. For help with searching see https://coherentdigital.net/resources2-1
These databases are useful for finding resources about children and young people. If your topic involves education or schools, you might find it useful to look at the databases for students in the School of Education.
The British Education Index provides information on research, policy and practice in education and training in the UK. It covers all aspects of education from preschool to higher education. Sources include education and training journals, mostly published in the UK. Some international literature is included.
Current and historical literature related to growth and development of children through the age of 21. This database contains journal articles, technical reports, books, book chapters, theses and dissertations.
ERIC, the Education Resource Information Center, includes journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, dissertations and theses, and books dating back to 1966.
You may also find it helpful to look at databases suggested to students in Population Health Studies or Psychological Sciences.
CINAHL includes journal articles, books, dissertations, conference proceedings and standards of practice related to nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and allied health disciplines.
International literature on biomedicine, including the allied health fields and the biological and physical sciences, humanities, and information science as they relate to medicine and health care.
International database covering summaries of journal articles, book chapters, technical reports and citations to dissertations in the field of Psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines.
Index to the worldwide literature on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health consequences of exposure to traumatic events.
Bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas.
African journal literature originating from a wide base of publishers and societies on the African continent.
Please note: full text downloads of patents is temporarily suspended from April 2023.This is due to Cybersecurity Administration of China (CAC) imposing new oversight requirements on specific content types appearing in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI)
China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), is a database of Chinese knowledge-based information resources. This platform covers journals, theses, proceedings, newspapers, books and ancient books.
Please note: before accessing full text pdfs, you should ensure that you have the Simplified Chinese Font Pack for Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Regional content from scholarly journals in South Korea.
This database brings together material from within former British colonies and Commonwealth nations, alongside some from former French and Portuguese territories, to provide primary source material created for local audiences during a period of enormous global change. After the Second World War decolonization movements around the world gathered pace, and from the small port colony of Aden to the vast Indian sub-continent, new borders were set and new nations built.
The role of the traditional ethnographer is changing as the perspectives and epistemologies of indigenous peoples have taken on central significance in the discipline, challenging earlier representations and implicit “us versus them” constructs. In order to create a platform for indigenous voices to address issues from indigenous perspectives, the third volume of the ethnographic film series is dedicated to indigenous filmmakers.
Science, social science, and arts and humanities research in published in open access journals from Latin America, Spain, Portugal, the Caribbean and South Africa.
This interactive tutorial guides you through the process of using databases optimally to find information on your topic.
A self-help tutorial on evaluating the quality of readings.
Sage Research Methods is a very useful resource when it comes to finding out about research methodology.
If you are undertaking a systematic or scoping literature review as part of your studies, have a look at our guide to Systematic Reviews for the Social Sciences