Why Use Them?
Research projects often require you to look close up at a body of research produced by scholars in a particular field.
This research is typically collected, codified, and made 
findable in a tool called a subject database.
Every academic discipline has at least one subject database that's considered the disciplinary gold standard -- a reliable, (relatively) comprehensive, and accurate record of the books that scholars are publishing, and the ideas they're debating and discussing in important and influential journals.
Databases are like lenses: they change what you see and how you see it -- and they offer you easy and efficient ways to bring your questions into sharper focus.
Top Picks
Subject-Specific Databases To Try
- The first and still most widely known full-text journal database, trusted for its content. JSTOR covers core scholarly journals in 75 fields.
- The premier database for legal information and scholarship, U.S. and worldwide
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
- The gold standard for scholarship on politics, political philosophy, theory, political psychology, and more.
- The key resource for scholarship on world history (excluding the U.S. and Canada), 1450-present
