Articles & Indexes - GC Databases
The GC Library subscribes to hundreds of databases, including many that index and/or provide full text of articles in a wide range of subject areas.
Browse the full list of databases here.
Consult the Research Guide in your subject area to find recommended databases in your field.
Follow the "Find it @ CUNY" links to access the full text of articles where indicated, and submit Interlibrary Loan requests for articles when the full text is not available.
Finding Specific Journal Articles
If you are looking for a specific journal article and have the citation, the best way to find the article is to start with a Journal Title Search.
- Go to the library's home page, library.gc.cuny.edu, click on the Journals tab, then enter the title or ISSN to search for a specific journal.
- Browse through the results to determine which of the library's databases holds the issue you need (coverage can overlap) or whether the issue is part of the library's printed collection.
- Click on the database with the right coverage and search for the article by author and/or title using the citation information you have.
- If the issue you need is in the library's printed collection, search for the journal in the stacks. Printed journals are arranged in alphabetical order on the shelves in the center of the library, towards 35th Street from the Reference Desk.
Printed Indexes
Printed indexes to newspapers and magazines can help you zero in on sources that may not have been digitized. You can find printed indexes in CUNY's OneSearch, WorldCat Discovery, or other library catalogs. Following are a few sample searches:
Subject:
American Newspapers--Indexes
British Newspapers--Indexes
Newspapers--Indexes
Periodicals--Indexes
New York Times--Indexes
[Any publication]--Indexes
Research Metrics
Scholarly metrics are a way to measure quantitatively the impact of an article, author, or journal. Consult our comprehensive Research Metrics guide for information and links to article- and journal-level tools.
Literature Review Articles
Literature review articles -- not to be confused with book reviews -- are a specific type of document that "provide a state-of-the-art assessment of knowledge in [a] particular field" (Mann, 161). Review articles are similar to encyclopedia articles, except they are usually geared for specialists rather than general readers and contain more extensive bibliographies.
Look for review articles when you are beginning a research project to get an overview of the scholarship in your field.
Source: The Oxford Guide to Library Research.
- Annual Reviews
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A great place to look for literature review articles, especially in the sciences. - Dissertations & Theses Global
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Dissertations often contain literature reviews. Look for one on your topic to find a literature review.
- Subject-Specific DatabasesCheck the Research Guide in your subject area to find recommended databases. Then search those databases for literature reviews by either (a) adding the term "literature review" (with quotes) to your search or (b) selecting the document type "review" or "literature review" to limit search results.
Writing Literature Reviews
If you are writing your own literature review, the UNC Writing Center has an informative and concise handout for constructing literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
For more in-depth assistance, log into Sage Research Methods to find tools and resources to help you research and write a literature review. And while you're there, watch the video tutorial "Using Sage Research Methods to do a Literature Review" for step-by-step instructions.
Citation Searches
A citation search will turn up publications that cite a source in a footnote. In The Oxford Guide to Library Research Thomas Mann calls citation searching "the mirror image of footnote chasing" because it takes you "forward in time, to subsequent sources published after your source" (Mann, 141).
The link below to Citation Indexes will take you to the Web of Science database. Choose "Cited Reference Search" instead of "Basic Search" to find the articles that cite a person's work.
- Citation Indexes
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The Graduate Center subscribes to the Web of Science, providing cited references from thousands of scholarly journals and conference proceedings in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences through Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index, Conference Proceedings Citation Index: Science, Conference Proceedings Citation Index: Social Science & Humanities and Book Citation Index. Academic Search Complete, PsycInfo, and some other EBSCO databases also provide cited references. - Journal Citation Reports
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Presents an array of citation-based metrics for journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection. Provides Journal Impact Factor (i.e., average number of citations in a given year to articles published by that journal in the previous two years, averaged over the number of articles published in those two years) for many but not all covered journals. Search or browse the database by journal (title or ISSN), subject category, or publisher. Compare metrics for up to four journals simultaneously. - Google Scholar
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Google Scholar, a multi-disciplinary database consisting of peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and articles from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities, and other scholarly organizations, is another good place for citation searching, especially in fields which rely more heavily on books than articles. After searching for a book, article or other item, click on the "Cited by" link to see a list of documents in Google Scholar that have cited that item. Google Scholar may turn up citations not found in Web of Science. Background information is available via the About Google Scholar page.
