Develop your idea
Know where to start to find research sources by topic
Identify relevant research and scholars by discipline and topic
Follow references and citations
Know where to start to do find research sources by topic
Explore Library Guides: SUBJECT guides introduce the best research sources (the best encyclopedias, library databases, and other academic resources available to you at Cornell) that you can mine to develop your own ideas and projects.
Consult Subject Encyclopedias: Go beyond Wikipedia to find academic background information on your idea/ project. Encyclopedia articles are good for developing a topic; educating yourself quickly; learning variant spellings, vocabulary, and terminology; and finding cited references (bibliographies).
Use the library guides (linked above) to find many more subject-specific encyclopedias (online or in print).
Key resource for research overviews:
- Annual Reviews Annually-published overview/synthesis of important topics in the study of 40 disciplines within the Biomedical, Life, Physical, and Social Sciences.
Identify relevant research and scholars by discipline and topic
- ProQuest Research LibraryProQuest Research Library, formerly known as Periodical Abstracts, is a comprehensive database available through the ProQuest online system. It indexes and abstracts general interest magazines and scholarly journals in the social sciences, humanities and sciences. It comprises two components: a core list of periodicals covering about 800 publications, and 15 subject-specific modules that supplement the core list. Modules cover arts, business, children, education, general interest, health, humanities, international studies, law, military, multicultural studies, psychology, sciences, social sciences, and women's interests. Full text of many articles is provided.
- Academic Search PremierThis multi-disciplinary database provides full text for more than 8,500 journals, including full text for more than 4,600 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles.
- Web of ScienceThomson Reuters Web of Science (formerly ISI Web of Knowledge) is today's premier research platform, helping you quickly find, analyze, and share information in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. You get integrated access to high quality literature through a unified platform that links a wide variety of content and search terms together, creating one common vocabulary and one seamless search.
- Google ScholarGoogle Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.--About Google scholar.
- JSTORJSTOR is a fully-searchable database containing the back issues of several hundred scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, music, ecology and botany, business, and other fields. It includes the following collections: Arts & sciences I, II and III, General science, Ecology and botany, Business, Language and literature.
- American Bibliography of Slavic and East European StudiesAmerican Bibliography of Slavic & Eastern European Studies (ABSEES), produced by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, provides information on East-Central Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet Union. Some of the many subjects covered include: anthropology, culture & the arts, economics, education, and geography. Sources indexed include journals, books, dissertations, online resources and selected government publications published in the U.S. and Canada. Coverage for ABSEES ranges from 1939-present.
- Bibliography of Asian StudiesThis on-line version of the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) contains over 750,000 records on all subjects (especially in the humanities and the social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia published worldwide from 1971 to the present. Through the 1991 printed volume, the BAS included citations to Western-language periodical articles, monographs, chapters in edited volumes, conference proceedings, anthologies, and Festschriften, etc. Monographs published since 1992, however, have not been added to the data.
- Africa-wide NiPadProvides access to multi-disciplinary information on Africa.
- Middle Eastern & Central Asian StudiesMECAS is a systematic and non-evaluative bibliographic index of research, policy and scholarly discourse on the countries and peoples of the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. This database contains more than 332,790 records and coverage spans from 1900 and earlier to present. Over 12,000 records of recently published and grey literature are added annually. Subject coverage includes: political affairs & law, international relations, economic affairs - business & industry, cultural heritage, arts & humanities, society & social welfare, ethnic diversity & anthropology, significant religious events & movements and recent history (1900 - present) & archaeology. MECAS includes the following: Middle East Bibliography (1946 - 2001), Middle East Book Bibliographies, Theses & Dissertations, MECAS Citations Database and School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) Library Catalogue (1900 - present).--About the Database page.
- Hapi OnlineCovers over 275,000 journal article citations about Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Mexico, Brazil, and Hispanics/Latinos in the United States.
- Cairn.infoCollection of high quality, full text peer reviewed academic journals from France and Belgium. The collection includes journals in the fields of history, literature and linguistics, psychology, sociology, political science, education, law and economics. Text and search interface in French.
- PASCAL FRANCISA searchable archive of two databases, FRANCIS (1972-2015) and PASCAL (1984-2015). FRANCIS covers 15 disciplines in human and social sciences with 2.6 million bibliographic references since 1972. PASCAL gathers 20 million bibliographic references in science, technology, and medicine. Emphasis on European academic journals.
- IBZ OnlineInternational interdisciplinary index of periodical literature covering basic research from all fields of knowledge, with particular emphasis on the humanities, arts and social sciences. Indexes a significant proportion of the periodicals published on the European continent. Multilingual, with English and German interfaces.
- CIAOColumbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) is the most comprehensive source for theory and research in international affairs. It publishes a wide range of scholarship from 1991 onward that includes working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, proceedings from conferences, books, journals and policy briefs. CIAO is also widely-recognized source for teaching materials including original case studies written by leading international affairs experts, course packs of background readings for history and political science classes, and special features like the analysis of a bin Laden recruitment tape with video.
- Project MUSECurrent issues of scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics. Covers such fields as literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, and others.
Follow references and citations
Just as you follow links on the web, follow lists of works cited in the articles and books you read. There are two strategies to following citations:
- Backward citation searching
Looking at the list of all sources cited by an author is called 'backward citation searching'. It provides a snapshot of the thinking and research available at the time the research was published. It tells you what sources, ideas, theories have shaped and influenced a researcher.
- Forward citation searching
Finding out whether an article was cited by authors after its publication will help you assess the importance of that article and how it has shaped subsequent research and scholarship. This is called 'forward citation searching". Web of Science cited reference search (see below) provides forward citation searching.
This LibGuide skill guide will help you navigate cited reference searching in Web of Science, JSTOR, EBSCO databases, and other databases with this feature.