Research Guides: Social Work: Find Articles

Find Articles

The library features over 200 databases to help you find different type of articles. When using databases look for the following format filters:

Scholarly
Peer-Reviewed
Academic Journals
Magazines
Trade Publication
Newspapers

Recommended Databases for Social Work

Databases are search tools (similar to a search engine) which indexes different type of publications (sometimes even media like the case of Films on Demand).

Start finding articles by searching in a multidisciplinary database that indexes periodicals (journals, newspapers, magazines), such as Academic Search Complete, ScienceDirect, and JSTOR, then move to specialized databases appropriate for your topic.

Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive multi-disciplinary database, it contains newspaper, trade and scholarly articles. It is the database most popular with college students.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text access to scholarly journals in the physical, social and health sciences.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Contains full text back issues of journal titles in the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences. Also contains 500+ open-access ebooks.
Google Scholar @ HPU This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Accessing Google Scholar via this link authenticates your off-campus computer, enabling off-campus access to the Libraries' resources.
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection is a comprehensive database covering information concerning topics in emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry & psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational & experimental methods.
PsycNET This link opens in a new window
Provides access to PsycINFO (citations and abstracts in psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences) and PsycARTICLES (full-text journal articles in subject areas such as applied psychology, health, theory, research, social/personality, and more).
Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
The Cochrane Library is a collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making, and a seventh database that provides information about Cochrane groups. Includes full-text Cochrane systematic reviews.
CINAHL Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
CINAHL Complete is the definitive research tool for all areas of nursing and allied health literature.
Religion and Philosophy Collection (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Provides extensive coverage of such topics as world religions, major denominations, biblical studies, religious history, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of language, moral philosophy and the history of philosophy.
PubMed @ HPU This link opens in a new window
PubMed comprises more than 24 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Access the database via PubMed @ HPU to see linked full text.
MEDLINE (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
MEDLINE provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from over 5,400 current biomedical journals.
ERIC (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
ERIC, the Education Resource Information Center, provides access to education literature and resources. The database contains more than 1.3 million records and provides access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index.
GreenFILE (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
GreenFILE offers well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
Sustainability Reference Center (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
The Sustainability Reference Center is a comprehensive full-text database covering all aspects of sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Offering content from more than 800 publications including journals, monographs, magazines, and trade publications, the Sustainability Reference Center provides the greatest concentration of sustainability-related information available today.
Business Source Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Business Source Complete is the world's definitive scholarly business database, providing the leading collection of bibliographic and full text content. As part of the comprehensive coverage offered by this database, indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals back as far as 1886 are included. In addition, searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,300 journals.

AZ Databases
List of all the databases subscribed by HPU Libraries.

Empirical Research

Empirical research are studies based on actual and objective observation, experience or experimentation (original research).

Empirical research articles are published in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals.
Most empirical studies articles comprise the following elements:
- abstract
- introduction (and review of the literature)
- method
- results
- discussion (and/or Conclusion)
- references

Note: Other research articles that are not empirical might have similar elements; always read the article specially the methods or methodology section to distinguish if that study is an original research.

Top Journals for Social Work

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
The Qualitative Report
Journal of Social Work
Journal of Social Work Education
Social Work Research
Access only 1995 - 12 months ago. Embargo of a year, request new articles via Interlibrary Loan
Clinical Social Work Journal