Strategies to Anchor and Orient Your Work
Research Move 1: Build on a Lead You Have Already: The 'Item in Hand' Approach
Key Resource: Google Scholar
Why: You already know the value of examining footnotes and bibliographies for related scholarship or for identifying primary source material. And you know that whenever you find material by these means, a quick HOLLIS search by book or article title will identify your access options.
Sometimes, though, you want to look beyond the item in hand -- not look at its antecedents but at its descendants -- the scholarship produced later and after, that has cited your item in its bibliography and footnotes. Following citation trails (Cited By) is a long-standing scholarly practice.
RESEARCH MOVE 2: Look for a more or less recent research overview on your topic or its broader dimensions.
Key Resource: Encyclopedias and Companions
If your topic falls outside the social sciences’ typical empirical scope, try the Oxford Research Encyclopedias*, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or Cambridge Companions—each offers high-level syntheses of theoretical debates in political and philosophical thought.
*Nota bene: The library does not subscribe to all of the encyclopedias in Oxford Research Encyclopedias, but articles may be ordered via interlibrary loan; just click the "Cite" button at the top of the article preview in ORE to get the full bibliographic information you need to make your request.
Key Resource: Annual Reviews
Why: Literature reviews help you easily understand—and contextualize—the principal contributions that have been made in your field. They not only track trends over time in the scholarly discussions of a topic, but also synthesize and connect related work. They cite the trailblazers and sometimes the outliers, and they even root out errors of fact or concept. Typically, they include a final section that identifies remaining questions or future directions research might take.
Example Review:
- Beliso-De Jesús, Aisha M, Jemima Pierre, and Junaid Rana. 2023. “White Supremacy and the Making of Anthropology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 52 (1): 417–35
Pro Tip:
- Watch your nomenclature. In the discipline of history, the common term for this research format is historiography.
Other Strategies for locating literature reviews:
- In subject databases, like those described below, you'll often be able to limit by literature review or review essay or historiography. You may need look for these these filters under the document type or methodology category.
- In book-length studies, the introduction (by author[s] or editor[s]) often acts as miniaturized lit review. In the process of announcing its purpose and origins, introductions identify the intellectual forbears who laid the groundwork.
- In dissertations, lit reviews commonly appear as an introductory or preliminary chapter. Try ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. Dissertations aren't peer-reviewed in the same way that published articles and academic books are, but they can also be a source for topics that are emerging, trending, or very current.
Research Move 3: Check for a subject bibliography as a way to direct your reading.
Key Resource: Oxford Bibliographies Online
Why: Selective rather than exhaustive and combining a bit of description with a little bit of evaluation, OBO entries help you identify some of the most important and influential scholarship on a broad social, political, cultural or interdisciplinary disciplinary topic.
Your very focused research question may not have a bibliography, but its larger dimensions - or its theoretical implications or something intellectually "adjacent" to it are likely to have some representation.
(Often, though, the issue in information-seeking isn't scarcity of material but overabundance. OBO entries can help you solve the dilemma of knowing who to read first, what to read for, or simply which voices in the conversation you should give some fuller attention to.)
Example Entries:
- Fascism [OBO Sociology module; see also its section on "Far Right"]
- Founding Myths of the Americas [OBO Atlantic History Module]
- Slurs, Pejoratives, and Hate Speech [OBO Philosophy module]
- Nationalism [OBO Sociology module; CTRL+F for myth]
Additional Overviews:
Cambridge Histories Online and titles in the Routledge Innovations in Political Theory series provide structured bibliographies and short essays.
Research Move 4: Deploy Language Strategically to Surface Backgrounds, Contexts, and Agenda-Setting Materials
Key Resource: HOLLIS
Examples:
- handbook or companion: this is a key academic format, regardless of discipline and denotes a published book that republishes ground-breaking work, or commissions scholarly essays that summarize standard approaches and important or consensus views. Other terms to try: reader or anthology.
- debate or controversy (or controvers* to pick up variants), or contested or disputed often help you surface works that identify the "stakes" of a particular argument, action, phenomenon, etc. So will words like proponents, advocates or their opposites: opponents or critics. Political scientists favor the term puzzle to express these ideas.
- theory or theoretical or philosophy or philosophical might help you find works in larger contexts or examined via a "lens" of some kind. You can truncate these terms, too, by the way: theor*, philosoph*
- history is a way to get at full-length studies not just of countries or events, but also of ideas and concepts and broad subjects.
- historiograph* can surface materials that address and synthesize approaches historians have used over time.
- narrative* or case study or interview* or even the phrase "lived experiences" angles topics toward a research approach, as do the more general terms, qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods.
- To identify anthropologically-focused topics, ethnography (or ethnograph*) is an option to try.
Subject Databases: Exploring Beyond HOLLIS, JSTOR, and Google Scholar
Political and Social Theory
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
Covers all aspects of political science, international relations, political history, theory, and philosophy, drawing its content from scholarship published around the world.
Covers the international literature in sociology, social work, and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. An essential resource for Social Studies concentrators.
Philosophy, Intellectual History and Cultural Theory
Provides indexing and abstracts of journal articles, books, contributions to anthologies, and book reviews published worldwide. Topics covered include aesthetics, axiology, philosophy of education, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of history, philosophy of language, logic, metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, metaphilosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of science, social philosophy, and the philosophy of religion.
Considers itself the largest existing compilation of philosophy research, built and maintained by philosophy scholars. Political theory and philosophy are well-represented.
MLA International Bibliography
A subject-specific index to worldwide scholarship on literature and media studies since 1926. Also includes linguistics and folklore. Strongest for Europe, the Americas, and Anglophone scholarship.
A multidisciplinary database that allows you to search across nearly 10,000 widely read and often cited academic journals and magazines. Includes the Arts & Humanities Citation Index.
Historical and Anthropological Context
America History and Life and/or Historical Abstracts
These complimentary databases are the gold standards for uncovering scholarship on the U.S. and Canada, prehistory to present (AHL) and the world, 1450-present (HA).
Searches across all of the publications that are produced by the American Anthropological Society.
AP combines the contents of two essential databases: Anthropological Index (produced by the Royal Anthropological Institute, UK) and Anthropological Literature (originally produced at Harvard's Tozzer Library and now maintained by the Peabody Museum here). It is considered the resource that most comprehensively convers anthropology, archaeology, subdisciplines, and related interdisciplinary research.
Getting Around Paywalls on the Web
Get Free Articles Anywhere on the Web: Your HarvardKey can get you access to articles across the web, even many behind paywalls.
- When all else fails, remember that you can cut and paste the title and put it intto HOLLIS to double-check. If we don't have it, you'll be prompted to request that we get it for you.
Saving and Citing Your Sources
Chicago Style
- The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition (Harvard Login)
- Examples of Chicago style citations, by format (courtesy of Fairfield University Library)
APA Style
- The official guide to APA style - HOLLIS record for Harvard’s print and online copies of the seventh edition.
- Examples of APA style citations, by format (courtesy of Fairfield University Library)
ZOTERO
- Zotero: Getting Started - Use Zotero to save and tag readings for your Archive. Generate citations for your Annotated Bibliography. Organize references for your Prospectus and Final Paper.
- Zotero Workshops - Introductory Zotero Basics sessions offered both online and in person (at Lamont and Cabot). See the Harvard Library Events Calendar for dates and registration.
