Conducting a Literature Review

Finding Journal Articles

Journals are scholarly publications, published on a regular basis, that keep the academic community abreast of current research in various fields. If you can think of a topic, there is probably a journal somewhere that covers it. Articles are searchable through databases.

Article databases are ideal for searching the journal literature because:

They include hundreds of journals, so you search through thousands of articles at once.
Some databases are general or interdisciplinary and provide broad coverage of many topics, while others are subject-specific and cover one field in-depth.
Many databases link to full- text articles, so you can read entire articles online.
Databases vary in content and may include more than just journal articles; conference proceedings, book chapters, theses, or technical reports may also be covered.
If a database only includes journal articles, various types of articles might be covered, such as articles from trade journals, magazines, or scholarly peer-reviewed journals.

Multidisciplinary Databases

Multidisciplinary databases cover a wide range of academic subjects ranging from arts, humanities, business, health, science, and social sciences. Multidisciplinary databases may include journal articles, newspapers, magazines, reports, books, and book chapters.

Quicksearch
Search for books, journal articles, newspapers, videos and more from this one resource.
Academic Search Premier
Multidisciplinary full-text database with peer reviewed journals, magazines and other resources from 1975 forward.
Web of Science [formerly Web of Knowledge]
The ISI Web of Science provides seamless access to the Science Citation Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. It enables users to search current and retrospective multidisciplinary information from approximately 8,500 of the most prestigious, high impact research journals in the world. ISI Web of Science also provides a unique search method, cited reference searching.
Scopus
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings and features tools to track, analyze, and visualize research.
JSTOR
Google Scholar
A simple way to search for scholarly literature. Includes full text and citations. Searching while signed in to the USF Library website can grant wider access to full text.

Subject Specific Databases

The USF Libraries subscribe to over 900 databases and 58,000 ejournals. That's a lot of different places to search!

In order to help you find the best database to use for different assignments, the USF Libraries also provide subject guides. These guides offer an introduction to databases and research tools tailored to specific fields.

Subject guides will help you find the best databases and resources to use for subject specific research. These guides are tailor made for conducting research at USF.

Subject Guides

Advanced Searching Skills

Advanced Searching Tips
Learn a relatively simple set of techniques involving the use of operators, each with a specific meaning and function, that can greatly enhance the searching experience, saving time and effort while also improving results.