Background Information

  • Oxford Bibliographies Online help you identify some of the most important and influential scholarship across a variety of academic disciplines.
    • Use the 'Browse by Subject' to see an alphabetical list of entries within each subject area. The basic search at the top will search all subjects, or use the Advanced Search to create a custom search within one or more subject areas. 
  • Annual Reviews series offers authoritative syntheses of the primary research literature in 46 academic fields, including anthropologypsychologypublic health, and sociology.
    • If you select a specific academic field, you can then browse each journal, looking at the Current Volume or All Volumes.The advanced search screen offers keyword searching, including ways to select certain titles, limit to particular disciplines, and narrow by date. If you find a review that seems on point, but rather dated (10 years or so), try searching for it (or any of the works cited) in Google Scholar. Then follow the “cited by” links to discover something more recent.
  • Oxford Handbooks Online provides introductions to topics and critical surveys of the current state of scholarship in specific fields.
    • Using the 'Browse by Subject' drop-down menu, Psychology is one of the subject areas. Once you click on the subject, there are too many articles for browsing, so you can try searching for a general topic idea by using the 'Modify Your Search' in the left-column, and entering a search word.
  • Web of Science The social sciences (and humanities) are also well-represented in this multidisciplinary database of over 20,000 journals. 
    • Web of Science can be a a powerful tool to uncovering literature reviews. A keyword topic search in Web of Science, much like HOLLIS, will return results that you can then sift through using a variety of left-side filter categories. Under document type, look for the "Review" option.