When searching for scholarly journal articles for your research and assignments we recommend the databases listed below.
You can use ‘Library Search’ to search across multiple resources and databases at the same time but using these individual databases will help you focus your search to the most relevant literature. It will also allow you to take advantage of some of the unique search features of each database.
We've listed the main 'disciplinary' specific databases which focus on a particular subject area as well as some 'multi-disciplinary' databases which allow you to search across multiple disciplines/subject areas.
Want to browse a particular journal? Our Journal Finder tool is an excellent tool to see the range of journals we have for English Literature (expand 'Languages & Literatures', then expand on 'English', and select a subject area to view literature journals.)
With over a third of a million full-text works of poetry, prose and drama in English, together with the definitive online criticism and reference library, Literature Online is the world's largest cross-searchable database of literature and criticism. It runs from the 8th Century to present and includes 340,000 works of poetry, 6,000 works of Drama, 2,250 works of prose as well as 210 journals.
Covering the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science and gender studies, Project Muse offers over 530 full text titles from over 60 scholarly publishers.
Coverage: Varies according to title
The following multidisciplinary citation databases can be useful as they allow you to search the scholarly literature across multiple disciplines (physical sciences, health sciences, social sciences, and life sciences) at the one time.
Scopus and Web of Science are citation indexes so you can track research via citations. You can see the references cited by each paper and view the papers that have subsequently cited a particular paper. It’s like looking back in time (the references cited by a paper) but also forward in time (the papers that cite a particular paper).
Academic Search Complete is another multidisciplinary database available on the EBSCOhost platform.
Scopus is one of the largest multi-disciplinary abstracting and indexing databases of research literature and quality web sources. It offers access to over 16,000 titles from more than 4000 international publishers, with abstracts available back to 1966. Citation data is available from 1996. Coverage includes scientific, technical, medical and social sciences literature, including arts and humanities. There are also 23 million patent records from 5 patent offices as well as links to 'Articles in Press' from over 3,000 journals.
Scopus Library Guide | E-tutorials and demos
Scopus is a citation index so you can track research via citations. You can see the references cited by each paper and view the papers that have subsequently cited a particular paper. It’s like looking back in time (the references cited by a paper) but also forward in time (the papers that cite a particular paper).
Archive of almost 2,000 core scholarly journals in Anthropology, Economics, Education, Finance, History, Language & Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Sociology and Statistics. Current content is not generally available.
Archive of almost 2,000 core scholarly journals in Anthropology, Economics, Education, Finance, History, Language & Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Sociology and Statistics. Current content is not generally available.
Coverage: Varies according to title.
Full-text access to more than 8,000 journals (over 7,000 peer-reviewed) and indexing for almost 12,000 covering the following disciplines: business, communications, computer science, biology, chemistry, engineering, physics, psychology, education and nursing.
Coverage: Varies according to title.