Research Guides: Political Science: Articles

Peer-Reviewed Journals

In peer-reviewed journals, also known as refereed journals or scholarly journals:

articles are published only after they have been critically evaluated and approved by several scholars (expert peer-reviewers)

reviewers can recommend that a paper be rejected, revised and re-submitted (rejection is still possible), or accepted. Acceptance without revisions is rare.
authors do not usually know the identity of their reviewers. In "double blind" peer review, both author and referee are anonymous.

Peer review lends credibility to the article by confirming that the research meets the standards of the scholarly community.

Verify that a journal is peer-reviewed with Ulrich's Periodical Directory

Full-Text Article Databases

Search any of these databases to find articles from peer-reviewed journals in Political Science. If the article you need is not available via USD's print or online journal subscriptions, you can order that article using the Interlibrary Loan article request form.

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text for many journals, citation records only for some. Includes current issues of journals. Limit your search to peer-reviewed journals only for scholarly research.
Public Affairs International Service (PAIS) This link opens in a new window
Use PAIS to search for journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference reports, publications of international agencies, microfiche, Internet material, and more. N.B. Typically does not include full-text of articles.
Sage Premier Journals This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text of journals published by Sage in many disciplines. Limit your search to Political Science journals or by sub-field.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text of articles from leading journals. Limit your search to Political Science journals, or to a specific journal. NOTE: Articles from the last 3-5 years are generally unavailable on JSTOR.

Citation Indexes

Citation indexes can help you to identify articles and to track citations (see who is citing whom). They generally do not provide full-text access to articles.

Use the library catalog to find out if USD has the article you need, or use ILL to request it from another library.

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Provides coverage of over 1,700 of the world’s leading scholarly social sciences journals.

Arts & Humanities Citation Index
Although primarily for arts & Humanities, this index also covers individually selected, relevant items from approximately 7,000 journals in the sciences and social sciences. (Dates of coverage: 1997-present.)