Library Guides: Development Studies: Databases and journals

Multidisciplinary databases

Databases allow you to search across a large amount of academic resources (including peer-reviewed journals) at the same time. Using them is often more efficient than browsing or searching within individual journals separately.

To learn key differences between library databases and other search platforms, visit the Comparing Search Pathways guide.

The recommended core multidisciplinary databases below will retrieve results from many different subject areas. For a comprehensive list of all available resources refer to the A-Z Ejournals and Databases page.

Discovery (EBSCO)
Use Discovery as a starting point for your research to get an overview of the key concepts, themes, and authors of your topic. Find journal articles, books, ebooks and more. Discovery search results do not include everything that the library provides access to.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a popular way to find sources for study and research. Set up your Google Scholar preferences to search for journal articles that the University of Melbourne has access to. Be aware that not all resources listed in Google Scholar results are scholarly.
JSTOR
JSTOR is one of the largest databases the Library has access to. It looks in thousands of journals in over a hundred subjects, many of them related to Arts and Humanities. Highly recommended as your first or second place to search.
ProQuest Central
Covering more than 160 subjects areas, ProQuest Central is the largest aggregated database of periodical content. It features a diverse mix of content including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, books, newspapers, reports and videos.
Scopus (Elsevier)
Scopus is a large, multidisciplinary database which looks through journals, books, and conference papers. Scopus doesn't always have full-text PDFs but the 'times cited' and 'related articles' tools make it an excellent place to quickly identify new research.
Web of Science
Web of Science is a massive, multidisciplinary database which includes a large amount of humanities and social sciences material from as far back as 1900. Like Scopus it has some advanced features that allows you to quickly link to related research.

Development Studies databases

There are many areas of focus within development studies, and you may have to search databases with broader as well as very specific coverage.

Refer to database recommendations in our subject-specific library guides to find resources relevant to your area of interest. Guides to get you started could include Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, Economics, Educational Research, First Nations in Education, and Population and Global Health.

A small selection of databases with content relevant to Development Studies to get you started:

AEI-ATSIS - Australian Education Index – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Subset (Informit)
AEI-ATSIS covers education and training relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, including learning and teaching language, literacy, teacher training, and professional development and is produced by the Cunningham Library at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). It covers the period from 1978 to present.
African e-Journals Project
The African e-Journals Project makes journals published in Africa and about Africa more available to scholars worldwide. The project offers two major resources. First, a directory of journals about Africa provides information about where to find tables of contents and abstracts, full text of articles online, and journal webpages, where they are available. Second, a full-text archive is provided of back issues of 11 scholarly journals published in Africa in the social sciences and humanities. Third, the links page offers information about other important websites that are increasing the accessibility of Africa journals as well as digital libraries about Africa of interest to scholars.
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.
CAB Abstracts
CAB Abstracts is the leading English-language bibliographic information service providing access to the world’s applied life sciences literature, including agriculture, environment, veterinary sciences, applied economics, food science and nutrition. With publications from over 120 countries in 50 languages, including English abstracts for most articles, researchers get the fullest global picture for any subject. Coverage commences with 1910 up to the present.
CIAO*
Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) is the world’s largest online resource of documents and articles devoted to research, analysis, and scholarship on international politics and related fields, including security studies, global finance, diplomatic practice, humanitarian law, global governance, development studies, and environmental studies. With content aggregated from 300 international publishing institutions, CIAO is a unique and valuable archive and cross-searchable library of full-text articles from government research organizations, independent think tanks, university analysis centers, and scholarly journals.
Current Contents Connect (ISI)
This database provides complete tables of contents and bibliographic information from the world's leading scholarly journals and books; also includes relevant, evaluated web sites and documents. Current Contents Connect is comprised of subject editions and collections: Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences (ABES); Social & Behavioral Sciences (SBS); Clinical Medicine (CM); Life Sciences (LS); Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences (PCES); Engineering, Computing & Technology (ECT); Arts & Humanities (AH); Business Collection (BC); Electronics & Telecommunications Collection (EC).
EMBASE
The Excerpta Medica database (EMBASE), produced by Elsevier, is a major biomedical and pharmaceutical database indexing over 3,500 international journals in the following fields: drug research, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, toxicology, clinical and experimental human medicine, health policy and management, public health, occupational health, environmental health, drug dependence and abuse, psychiatry, forensic medicine, and biomedical engineering/instrumentation. There is selective coverage for nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, psychology, and alternative medicine. Coverage is from 1947 up to the present, and is updated weekly.
Global Financial Development
The Global Financial Development Database is an extensive dataset of financial system characteristics for 203 economies. The database includes measures of (1) size of financial institutions and markets (financial depth), (2) degree to which individuals can and do use financial services (access), (3) efficiency of financial intermediaries and markets in intermediating resources and facilitating financial transactions (efficiency), and (4) stability of financial institutions and markets (stability).
OxResearch Database (Proquest)
This database provides succinct analytical articles covering world and regional economic and political developments of major significance. It evaluates issues and events within a coherent political, social and economic framework. Additionally, it contains objective, multi-disciplinary articles compiled by an extensive international network of over 1,000 faculty members at Oxford and other leading universities around the world, as well as think-tanks and institutes of international standing. This is a component of ProQuest's Business Market Research Collection.