Subject Guides: Literature Reviews: Researching

Guide Contents

Literature Sources

This is not meant to be a full list of sources, but a starting point. For more databases, see the Subject Guide for your area of study.

Public Administration Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Includes bibliographic records covering essential areas related to public administration, including public administration theory, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Finds scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. If you use this Google Scholar link, you will be able to use the Get it link to take advantage of the Libraries' full text and InterLibrary Loan services.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Provides access to the latest research in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. Includes the subset Social Services Abstracts.
Sustainability Reference Center This link opens in a new window
Full-text database that covers many areas relating to sustainability such as corporate social responsibility, environmental stewardship, regulations, green issues, renewable energy, and social entrepreneurship.
Business Source Ultimate This link opens in a new window
Journals in all disciplines of business. Includes industry reports, market research, and SWOT analysis.

Also includes financial data, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, and SWOT analyses. Coverage: 1866-present.
Education Source This link opens in a new window
Full text for more than 1,700 journals, 550 books and conference papers, citations for over 4 million articles including book reviews and over 100,000 controlled and cross-referenced names of educational tests.

Spans all levels of education from early childhood to higher education and also includes specialties such as multilingual education, health education and testing. Subject matter includes Adult Education, Continuing Education, Distance Learning, Government Funding, Multicultural/Ethic Education, Social Issues, Student Counseling, Vocational Education as well as many others.

Principal Journals
The list of DPA approved journals as found the Handbook.

Search Literature Reviews

Locating a literature review related to your topic can not only speed up your research process by helping identify large amounts of relevant literature.

Annual Reviews This link opens in a new window
These summarize the current state of research on a subject by organizing, synthesizing, and critically evaluating the relevant literature.

Biomedical, Physical, and Social Sciences review articles (dating back to when the annual review began). Most articles provide an exhaustive bibliography. Browse or search individual titles of the Annual Reviews for the Biomedical Sciences, Physical Sciences, or Social Sciences. Use the Bibliographic Search to search for citations only from all Annual Reviews publications. Coverage: 1932 - present.

Campbell Collaboration Library of Systematic Reviews
Systematic reviews that covers criminal justice, social welfare, international development, education, and methods.

Tips

Build on research (ethically)

Using literature reviews related to your topic in order to find sources can be a fast-track way to get started. Some databases, such as Annual Reviews (all subjects) and Cohrane Library (health sciences) make this easy to do.
You can try searching "literature review" AND "yourtopic" in many databases, but may get too many results..if so...
Some databases will let you limit to searching just literature reviews by using Subject Headings or Descriptors. Look on the screen for a Thesaurus option, or looking under the HELP option (usually under the top right corner).
Mine the reference list of relevant articles and books. Many of our databases make this easy by providing a link to the reference list right on screen (with the full text of the literature or the service. Keep particular track of names, works and journal titles that keep re-occurring.
Web of Science will allow you to search for articles and journals in which a particular author or a particular article has been cited, thus allowing you to trace a methodology or theme more easily. It also creates a citation map going backwards or forwards so you can see where the cited work has been cited and then that was cited or...in short, you are creating graphical representations of who was cited in a paper, and who cited the paper, across fields, for three generations.

For more, see Citation Analysis and Metrics.