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The purpose of this pathfinder is to help you find general (non-law) periodical articles on a topic that interests you. Whether you're working on a paper exploring the liability of psychologists and want to find reports of malpractice in the psychology literature, or you're looking at a corporate governance issue and need to do some research in the business and finance literature, you may need at some point in your law school career to expand your research beyond law reviews.
In other disciplines, much like the law, journals are used as a platform for current discourse on both emerging and settled issues, and to present and discuss the results of recent research. Though the publication schedule does introduce some delays, articles contain more current scholarship in a discipline than treatises or other books can provide.
The best way to identify articles that may be of interest is by using an Index. Indexes are developed by culling basic information about each article in each issue of the journals covered by the index (title, author, publication information, and some descriptive keywords), much like a library's online catalog. You won't find the article itself in the index, just a description of what it's about. If it looks interesting, you'll have to look in the library's catalog to find where the journal is located in the library (print or online).
To use an index to find articles on a particular topic, you must first choose some descriptive keywords for your topic. Try to think both of the specific issue you're looking for (e.g., "HIPAA rights of patients in private mental health facilities") and the broader area of the law to which it belongs (like "mental health", or "HIPAA", or even "patients' rights"), keeping in mind that you're trying to choose words likely to be used to describe your issue, and less likely to be used to describe other issues. For instance, in the medical database MEDLINE, using the term "health care" is unlikely to be helpful.
As you search, you may need to adjust or refine your keywords to limit or expand your results to a manageable number of relevant articles. The index will also provide some suggestions for broader or related terms, if you look up your keyword. Keep a record of the citation information for your article, as follows:
Psychiatr Clin North Am 2002 Sep; 25(3): 575-84, vi-vii
Citation style varies considerably among disciplines. In this case, the first part is an abbreviation of the journal's name. Unfortunately, there isn't an easy, one-stop-shop resource for deciphering these abbreviations. If in doubt, ask a reference librarian. The (2002) refers to the year when your article was published, followed by the month. The 25(3) refers to volume 25, issue number 3, followed by the page numbers where the article appears in that issue. Now you have all the information you need in order to find the article.
Unlike law, many of the resources used for finding articles in the social sciences and humanities combine multiple disciplines into one resource. A brief list of indexes in a variety of disciplines follows; for a complete list, see the Library's Online Research Resources tool (ORR), or the list of subject guides linked below.
Multi-disciplinary Indexes:
Academic Search Premier
Expanded Academic Index (1980-present)
Index to Early American Periodicals (history of science, religion, and social science, 1741-1935)
JSTOR (full-text of articles in many disciplines)
Periodicals Contents Index (articles in many disciplines, 1770-present)
Humanities Indexes:
19th Century Masterfile (18th century – 1920s in history, social sciences and literature)
America, history and life (North American history, published from 1964-present)
Arts & Humanities Citation Index -
Art Full Text
Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals
Historical Abstracts (non-North American history, published from 1954-present)
Humanities Abstracts (includes art, architecture, film, journalism, and religion, 1984-present)
Science/Technology Indexes:
Biological Abstracts (BIOSIS; 1969-present)
BioOne Abstracts & Indexes (1998-present)
Environmental Engineering Abstracts (1990-present)
Web of Science (1980-present)
Social Sciences Indexes:
ABI/Inform (1971-present)
Anthropology Plus (19th century – present)
Business Source Premier (1965-present)
EconLit (1969-present)
Gender Watch (1970-present)
International Political Science Abstracts (1989-2004)
PsycINFO (articles in psychology, 1872-present)
Public Affairs Information System (PAIS)
Social Science Citation Index (1982-present)
Social Services Abstracts (1980-present)
Sociological Abstracts (1960-present)
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (1975-present)
Your first stop to see whether the UIUC has a particular article online, should be the ORR's journals tab. Type in the name of the journal, and if found note the dates of coverage.
For example, searching for the "American journal of psychiatry" yields the following:
The American journal of psychiatry See Catalog: v.78 (1921) - present
1997-Present in HighWire
01/1995-Present in Ovid ( Journals @ Ovid )
1997-Present in HighWire - Free Full Text
in Free Medical Journals
01/1985-03/1987 in LexisNexis Academic
1995-2005 in OCLC FirstSearch - Periodical Abstracts
In the results screen, roll over any of these icons for more information. Note that "present" does not necessarily mean
today – many of our online resources are licensed with what publishers call a "moving wall," which blocks the most recent 1-3 years worth of the journal. The only sure-fire way to tell whether your article is contained in one of these resources is to examine each. Here's a rough guide to deciding where to start:
- journals in HighWire, HeinOnline, JSTOR and Ovid usually allow easy browsing by date, and include pdf images of the articles. Try one of these option first, if your article's publication date is within the range stated.
- InfoTrac, Gale's Expanded Academic, EBSCO and Ingenta Select generally allow browsing by date/volume, but don't always include pdf images. Choose one of these options next.
- resources with the magnifying glass may require you to search for the article once you click the link, so be sure to copy down the author and/or title. These include FirstSearch' Periodical Abstracts, ABI-Inform, and ERIC.
- LexisNexis Academic includes no pdf images of articles and can be difficult to search, so select this last. If your article isn't available anywhere else, search through the law school platform instead (law students and faculty only).
If your article is not included in one of the online resources, check the print holdings to see if we have the journal on campus. Follow the catalog link to see where the journal is held, and what the most recent issue is.
See also:
Subject Guides at UIUC Libraries:
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/learn/handouts/subjectguides.html
Education and Social Science Library:
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/
History and Philosophy resources:
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/hix/history_website/findingarticles.htm
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