Political Science & Government Study

The databases listed are recommended for locating articles on Political Science. See the Databases & Article Searching page more database options.

Scholarly journals are also called 'academic' or 'peer reviewed' journals. They publish articles written by scholars, specialists, or researchers in the field (as opposed to articles written by journalists reporting on or synthesizing research). Some Library databases have a check button for scholarly journals so that your search results would exclude non-scholarly journals. The databases without the limit are mainly for academic journals only. For more information about differernces  between scholarly and non-scholarly articles, check this guide Magazine or Scholarly Journal.

Google Scholar searches for references to scholarly articles and research papers.  Sometimes the full text is posted online and linked, other times users will see a "Find It at Sac State" option next to the Google Scholar listing (see explaination above).  Follow these instructions to configure Google Scholar to display the "Find It at Sac State" link. Except for the most simple queries, using Google Scholar Advanced Search is recommended.

Click here for help using Google Scholar.