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Where to look for scholarly articles?
Despite the fact that the academic world has changed drastically in the last decade and made research more open and accessible thanks to the Internet, scholarly articles are still a commodity and are available in many instances only in the commercial bibliographic databases, i.e. through the library, where you have to be identified as a legitimate user. Keep in mind that databases can contain more than articles (book reviews and editorials, for example), so analyze the results of your search and mark off the search box to include only scholarly (peer-reviewed) articles in the search.
Familiarize yourself with the databases offered through your library by reading their description, studying the library recommended research guides or just talking to the librarians. Some databases are strictly specialized; some are aggregators that will search through journals covering several disciplines that can be encompassed into the area of international criminal justice. Check the listing of the library databases below for the list of some suggested specialized library databases.
Launching a search in OneSearch is a good starting point but the amount of the results received might be sometimes overwhelming.
In order to be more flexible with the construction of the search and to get a manageable amount of results it is a good practice to use subject specific databases. You can explore databases listed under International Criminal Justice, or Criminal Justice, or Terrorism, or Globalization just to name a few. Pick one or two subject areas and explore the options, master a database or two and then move to a new one to expand your search options.
Note: for help how to login into library resources see the instructions here.
Below is a very selected list of databases that are useful for the ICJ topics:
Criminal Justice Abstracts - Excellent source of scholarly articles, books, chapters in books, government reports and dissertations. Some international publications are included with in-depth abstracts in English. The same platform allows having access to other CSA databases: Sociological Abstracts and Worldwide Political Science Abstracts.
Criminal Justice Database - Provides information from practitioners’ point of view; includes police and other law enforcement professional, or trade, publications as well as scholarly journals.
EBSCOhost – provider of over a hundred specialized databases covering practically all areas of knowledge. The search can be performed either in an individual database or in multiple databases simultaneously (click on the option Choose Databases to see the whole list to choose from). Databases that you might find useful are Academic Search, MasterFILE, International Political Science Abstracts, International Security & Counterterrorism Reference Center, Middle Eastern & Central Asian Studies, Military & Government Collection, National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts, Newspaper Source, Peace Research Abstracts, SocIndex, Urban Studies Abstracts, Violence & Abuse Abstracts.
HeinOnline - is the world's largest image-based legal research database. Publications are organized into separate sets based on the U.S. or international focus and available in full-text access cover-to-cover.
JSTOR – a collection of complete runs of hundreds of academic journals in full-text except for the current issues (last 2-5 years depending on the copyright agreements between the JSTOR and the publishers).
NCJRS Library/Abstracts – (also available through EBSCOhost). Free database of criminal justice literature from around the world. Excellent thesaurus of criminal justice terms.
Nexis Uni (former Lexis Nexis) – Legal Research part of NexisUni has access to a vast collection of law reviews. News part allows searching for newspaper and magazine articles in English and some other languages.
Oxford Criminology Bibliography Online - Topic overviews and bibliographies on pertinent topics in criminal justice and law enforcement with links to the full text of sources when available.
Project MUSE - online database of more than 200 journals in humanities and social sciences from nonprofit publishers.
SAGE Criminology Collection – allows searching for articles in twenty four criminal justice journals.
SAGE Knowledge Collection - hundreds of ebooks and subject encyclopedias, including major titles in criminal justice, research methods, psychology, and social issues from Sage and CQ Press.
Scopus - Access to peer-reviewed journal titles from international publishers in science, technology, social science and medicine. Results can be refined by author affiliation, funding source, and more. Coverage from the 1960's to the present.
Social Sciences Full Text - indexes more than 415 English-language periodicals in anthropology, criminology, economics, law, geography, policy studies, psychology, sociology, social work, and urban studies.
Springerlink - Hundreds of scholarly journals published by Springer and an index to Springer Books. Coverage from 1997 to the present.
WorldLII - the World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) collects legal materials on international level and provides free access to them through its website.