Research Guides
SISSE 343/POLS 343 - Spring 2013: Getting Started
Southeast Asian Politics
General Literature Review Resources
- Annual Reviews This link opens in a new window
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Annual Reviews publications are among the most highly cited in the scientific literature; narrow by Social Sciences and specific academic disciplines
- Gale Virtual Reference
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Searchable library of reference e-books. Search Countries and Their Cultures (warning rather old sources).
- ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
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A comprehensive index to dissertations and theses from all fields of study.
- The social sciences: a cross-disciplinary guide to selected sourcesTop research resource in the Social Sciences, edited by Nancy Herron, Located in Suzzallo Library Reference
- Social science reference sources: a practical guideRecommended Social Science foundational or reference readings, edited by Tze-chung Li, Located in Suzzallo Library Reference
Citation Tracking Tools
- EigenfactorGo to Mapping and search Political Science
- Google ScholarChoose Web of Science under Select Databases for access to scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Use the advanced search feature to limit by publication date, journal, author, discipline; use the "cited by" and "related articles" features to connect to other scholars.
- Web of ScienceUse Select Database to go to Web of Science for access to scholarship in the sciences, social sciences, humanities and arts. Use the "times cited" feature and "cited reference search" to narrow your literature review; create a "citation report" on your literature review topic
Plan Your Review
Define your area of interest using more general literature
- Are there existing Literature Reviews?
- Search UW catalog using terms "methods" or "research" or "bibliography" in conjunction with terms for your topic
- Search Interdisciplinary Tools for review articles
- Search Discipline-specific databases using terms such as "Literature review," "Bibliographic essay.
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- Select your source databases
- Visit the Libraries' Research Guides to see what databases are recommended for your field
- Use OCLC for comprehensive book searches, if books are important in your field
- Indexing only, or full-text databases: be sure that you are not missing older data
- What is in an index? Chapters from books? Only journal articles? Popular interpretations, news reports?
- Citation databases, like Social Science Citation Index: allow citation tracing to determine important research
- Web of Science - Use the "times cited" feature and "cited reference search" to narrow your literature review; create a "citation report" on your literature review topic
- Google Scholar - Use the advanced search feature to limit by publication date, journal, author, discipline; use the "cited by" and "related articles" feature to connect to other scholars
- Select your source databases
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- Discipline-specific databases will provide more useful information than aggregated databases, like Academic Search Complete
- Choose search terms
- Become familiar with the terms used in your databases
- In EBSCO databases, click "Choose Databases" to refine your literature search to disciplines
- Within your database, click on section indicating terms, e.g. Thesaurus (Eric), Index -- Subject Descriptors (EconLit) or MESH (Medline)
- For book searching, become familiar with the Library of Congress Subject Headings. Start with a keyword search, and find a book that is on your topic, look at the Subject Headings and click on them to refine your search, or find similar items.
- Become familiar with the terms used in your databases
- Define criteria for relevance
- What is the scope of the empirical materials you are searching for? Subjects, date ranges etc.
- What languages are important to your field. Are you using search terms that catch those languages?
- Define criteria for methodology
- What are the possible methodologies you might employ, do they fall within a discipline, interdisciplinary?
- What are the specialized disciplinary sources for this methodology?