The Top 21 Free Online Journal and Research Databases
- CORE. CORE is a multidisciplinary aggregator of open access research.
- ScienceOpen.
- Directory of Open Access Journals.
- Education Resources Information Center.
- arXiv e-Print Archive.
- Social Science Research Network.
- Public Library of Science.
- OpenDOAR.
Top Ten Search Tips
- Use AND to combine keywords and phrases when searching the electronic databases for journal articles.
- Use truncation (an asterisk) and wildcards (usually a question mark or exclamation point).
- Find out if the database you're using has a "subject search" option.
- Use your imagination.
EBSCOhost is a powerful online reference system accessible via the Internet. It offers a variety of proprietary full text databases and popular databases from leading information providers.
To Access EBSCOhost:
Go to library's home page at Scroll down the alphabetical list and click on EBSCOhost. Enter your college login and password. That will take you to a page that lists and describes all the EBSCO databases.ProQuest is a collection of many databases that provide access to thousands of journals, magazines, newspapers, dissertations, and other publications. Mouse over Find on the library homepage then click on A-Z Database List.
A scholarly, multi-disciplinary database providing indexing and abstracts for thousands of journals and other publications. Academic Search Complete includes full-text access to peer-reviewed journals, as well as indexing and abstracts for magazines, monographs, reports, and conference proceedings.
EBSCO provides free research databases covering a variety of subjects for students, researchers and librarians. EBSCO Open Dissertations now includes the content from American Doctoral Dissertations. It is a free database with records for more than 1.2 million electronic theses and dissertations from around the world.
You will need to look at the journal information to find out if the articles it publishes are peer-reviewed. If the article is from a printed journal, look at the publication information in the front of the journal.
Enter the journal title (not the article title) in the search box in Ulrich's. Click on the Search icon and find your journal in the search results. Look for the refereed icon, shaped like an umpire's jersey, indicating the journal is peer reviewed. It displays on the left side of the page, near the article title.
Unfortunately Google Scholar doesn't have a setting that will allow you to restrict results only to peer-reviewed articles. If you find articles in Google Scholar, you would have to look up the journal the article is published in to find out whether they use peer review or not.
Examples of peer reviewed journals include: American Nurse Today, Journal of Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, Journal of Higher Education, and many more. If your professor asks you to use only peer reviewed sources, most databases (such as EbscoHost) will allow you to limit to just peer reviewed.
The Top 21 Free Online Journal and Research Databases
- CORE. CORE is a multidisciplinary aggregator of open access research.
- ScienceOpen.
- Directory of Open Access Journals.
- Education Resources Information Center.
- arXiv e-Print Archive.
- Social Science Research Network.
- Public Library of Science.
- OpenDOAR.
Finding Scholarly Articles
- Look for publications from a professional organization.
- Use databases such as JSTOR that contain only scholarly sources.
- Use databases such as Academic Search Complete or other EBSCO databases that allow you to choose "peer-reviewed journals".
Peer-reviewed (refereed or scholarly) journals - Articles are written by experts and are reviewed by several other experts in the field before the article is published in the journal in order to ensure the article's quality. (The article is more likely to be scientifically valid, reach reasonable conclusions, etc.)
The Top 21 Free Online Journal and Research Databases
- CORE. CORE is a multidisciplinary aggregator of open access research.
- ScienceOpen.
- Directory of Open Access Journals.
- Education Resources Information Center.
- arXiv e-Print Archive.
- Social Science Research Network.
- Public Library of Science.
- OpenDOAR.
The top list of academic research databases
- Scopus. Scopus is one of the two big commercial, bibliographic databases that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline.
- Web of Science.
- PubMed.
- ERIC.
- IEEE Xplore.
- ScienceDirect.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- JSTOR.
Most information found through a search engine is free. Library databases cannot be accessed through search engines or the open web. You must already be a member or pay for a subscription in order to access the material from these web sites.
Scopus. Scopus is a database from Elsevier. It is a large abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research.
Research Databases. Research databases are organized collections of computerized information or data such as periodical articles, books, graphics and multimedia that can be searched to retrieve information. These databases are available from the Library's Website. To review these databases, click on Research Databases.
Academic Search Complete. Designed for academic institutions, this database is a leading resource for scholarly research. It supports high-level research in the key areas of academic study by providing journals, periodicals, reports, books and more.
Access
- Go to the library homepage at
- Click Article Databases.
- Scroll down to Proquest Databases and click it.
- Enter your college login and password if you're asked to.
The top list of academic research databases
- Scopus. Scopus is one of the two big commercial, bibliographic databases that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline.
- Web of Science.
- PubMed.
- ERIC.
- IEEE Xplore.
- ScienceDirect.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- JSTOR.
$295 $495 $995 Elementary Middle High NA School Market – Unlimited site licensing based on “per library per year” pricing. Unlimited site licensing offers unlimited usage within the site and remote access on an annual subscription.
Operated by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and German Climate Computing Centre, The World Data Centre for Climate (WDCC) is the largest database in the world.
Databases are more credible because publishers have checked the contents for accuracy and reliability. Databases provide quick access to information on the Web, such as newspaper, magazine articles, biographies, books reviews, images and more.
No. Some are but often the results link to a publisher's website that asks you for payment to access an article. Don't pay for articles. Instead, you can set up Google Scholar to connect to FindIt (see above).
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
The CINAHL Database. The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, this database provides indexing for more than 3,075 nursing and allied health journals. CINAHL databases are the most widely-used and respected research tools for nurses, students and allied health professionals around the globe.
Examples: Scholarly Articles in the databases (will say if they are peer reviewed or not!) Scholarly Articles in Scholarly Journals (in databases, but sometimes can find online) Anthologies—collections of essays on a specific topic that are peer reviewed.
Find articles, books, ebooks, videos, podcasts, images, background information & more.
Why a Database Might Be a Better Choice than Google Scholar.
| Library Databases | Google Scholar |
|---|
| • Provide the ability to focus search by subject area. | • Does not have the ability to focus search by subject area. |
ResearchGate is a networking site for researchers, particularly those engaged in broadly scientific research. ResearchGate is free to join and currently has about 3 million users mainly in the sciences. It offers the following benefits to researchers: Sharing publications.
Examples of bibliographic databases include the GALILEO database Social Sciences Abstracts, or the Internet Movie Database on the World Wide Web. A full-text database provides the full-text of a publication.
