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 and advanced search engines than Google or Library Search. You may need to search across multiple databases to find a broader range of literature. They are trustworthy, scholarly sources with clear citation information.
If you want to know more about the resources you will find in a particular database, click on the i symbol to see more information.
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.
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.
Gale Academic OneFile provides millions of articles from over 17,000 scholarly journals and other authoritative sources, including videos from BBC Worldwide Learning to thousands of podcasts and transcripts from CNN. It includes more than 11,000 peer-reviewed journals (more than 8,000 in full text).
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.
JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources.
Science, social science, and arts and humanities research in published in open access journals from Latin America, Spain, Portugal, the Caribbean and South Africa.
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
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.
PubMed contains references to journal papers from Medline and life sciences journals.
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.
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.
Vast database of full-text handbooks, videos and case studies of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Also includes a research project planner, with step by step help on each stage of the research process, for all types of dissertation or research project.
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