Library Guides: Social Practice and Community Engagement: Find Journal Articles

Develop your search terms

Do you know which search terms to use to find great articles on your topic?
Experiment with your keywords in one of these broad search options before diving into more specialised search locations.

Discovery searches across a large number of databases. Use Advanced Search and subject filters for the best results.
Proquest Central is similar to Discovery, searching across multiple databases
Google Scholar is a convenient search tool, but you'll need to set up Find it @ Unimelb links to effectively use Google Scholar for library research.

Once you've found a few good resources, explore some subject-specific databases and journals.

Why are there so many places to search?

Visit the Comparing Search Pathways guide for a quick explainer.

Community Cultural Development databases

Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts (ASSIA)
This database spans the literature of health, social services, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, race relations and education. The database abstracts and indexes over 500 journals and periodicals, from more than 16 countries.
Art Index Retrospective (H.W. Wilson)
Art Index Retrospective™: 1929 -1984 provides users access to over half a century of art literature covering fine, decorative, and commercial art. Content includes high-quality indexing of nearly 600 publications, many of which are peer-reviewed, and citations of over 25,000 book reviews.

ARTstor Digital Library
Artstor is JSTOR’s cross-disciplinary collection of rights-cleared images from around the world. The collection provides more than one million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences from outstanding international museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates.

International Index to Performing Arts Full Text (ProQuest)
This database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 260 international periodicals, plus full text for more than 100 of the indexed journals. IIPA covers a broad spectrum of the arts and entertainment industry - including dance, drama, theater, stagecraft, musical theater, circus performance, opera, pantomime, puppetry, magic, performance art, film, television and more.
PsycINFO (Ovid)
PsycINFO is an index of literature published in psychology, psychiatry and related disciplines, including nursing, social work and pharmacology. Records are indexed using the Thesaurus of Psychological Index terms. PsycInfo contains more than 3.5 million records from nearly 2,500 journals.
ERIC (ProQuest)
The ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to provide extensive access to educational-related literature. ERIC provides coverage of journal articles, conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books and monographs.
SocINDEX with Full Text (EBSCOhost)
SocINDEX™ with Full Text is the world's most comprehensive and highest-quality sociology research database. Its extensive scope and content provide users with a wealth of extremely useful information encompassing the broad spectrum of sociological study. The database features more than 2.1 million records with subject headings from a 20,000+ term sociological thesaurus designed by subject experts and expert lexicographers.

Electronic & Print Journals

Using Advanced Google Search

Use the site or domain limiter in Google Advanced Search to quickly find information on websites and online publications.

For example:

Limit search results to only show results from e-flux by including site:e-flux.com or Frieze using site:frieze.com in your search.

Searching effectively with Google

Multidisciplinary databases

Academic Search Complete (EBSCOhost)
Academic Search™ Complete is a multidisciplinary full-text database, providing access to more than 8,600 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,500 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text it offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
British Humanities Index: BHI (ProQuest)
This database is an international abstracting and indexing tool for research in the humanities. BHI indexes almost 400 internationally respected humanities journals and weekly magazines published in the UK and other English speaking countries, as well as quality newspapers published in the UK.
Informit
Informit provides access to unique specialist content through its collection of over 90 databases. These cover a wide range of subjects, including health, engineering, business, education, law, humanities and social sciences. Informit's products contain content sourced from publishers, associations and peak professional bodies as well as international authors.
JSTOR (ITHAKA)
JSTOR is a growing digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. Titles span a wide range of disciplines, including leading journals in core areas such as business & economics, education, history, and language & literature and science. Current journals are linked and cross-searchable with archival journals and ebooks on JSTOR, helping patrons discover, use, and build upon a wide range of academic content.
MLA International Bibliography (Chadwyck-Healey)
The International Bibliography is a classified listing and subject index of scholarly books and articles on modern languages, linguistics, literature from all over the world, literary theory, folklore, dramatic arts, history of printing and publishing, and teaching of language and literature. The database is compiled by the Modern Language Association of America and commenced in 1926. This online version includes the Bibliography's entire print run.
Philosopher's Index
Bibliographic database covering scholarly research in all areas of philosophy
Project Muse Journal Collection
Project MUSE offers full-text current and archival articles from 500+ scholarly journals from major university presses covering literature and criticism, history, performing arts, cultural studies, education, philosophy, political science, gender studies, and more. Updated continually.
ProQuest Central
A multidiscliplinary collection of databases with important business databases including ABI/INFORM. Content includes peer-reviewd journals, newspapers, industry reports and company profiles.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global
This database is the world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1743 to the present day and offering full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997.
PsycARTICLES (Ovid)
PsycARTICLES is a database of full-text articles from journals published by the American Psychological Association, the APA Educational Publishing Foundation and the Canadian Psychological Association. More than 178,000 full-text peer-reviewed journal articles
SAGE Journals (SAGE)
The SAGE Journals collection includes hundreds of journals spanning the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Science, Technology, and Medicine. Many of the journals are published on behalf of learned societies and institutions.

ArtsHub & ScreenHub

ArtsHub
The Library's institutional subscription does not give access to all functions on the ArtsHub site. Library users cannot upload a resume or curriculum vitae or cover letter to use when submitting job applications from within ArtsHub. These features are restricted to personal subscribers.
ScreenHub
Screen Hub is the daily email News and Jobs service for people working in the Australian film and television industries.

Article Requests

Article requests

Found an article that looks great, but can't find it online?

Check if we have the article in print by searching for the journal title in the library catalogue
If we have the journal at another campus, submit an Intercampus Copying Request for a PDF scan
If you can't find the journal in our collection at all, request a PDF copy of the article with Inter-library Loans
Still not sure? Ask us for help on Library Chat