IELP Library Guide for Student Research: Scholarly Articles

Business Databases

Academic Search Premier
Provides selected full text, scholarly, and peer reviewed articles in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Business Source Premier
Provides full text and citations to articles in various business publications; also includes company profiles, industry profiles, and country information.

Computer Sciences Subject Guide with Databases & Academic Search Premier

Computer Science
by Michael Bowman Last Updated Mar 26, 2025 172 views this year

Academic Search Premier
Provides selected full text, scholarly, and peer reviewed articles in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Biology Databases

Academic Search Premier
Provides selected full text, scholarly, and peer reviewed articles in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Alt-HealthWatch
Contains full text articles and other publications covering topics in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
Health Source: Nursing/Academic edition
Presents article citations and full text articles from health and medicine journals.

English Databases

Academic Search Premier
Provides selected full text, scholarly, and peer reviewed articles in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Communication Source
Provides abstracts and indexing as well as full-text content from global titles pertaining to many fields of communication studies.
MLA International Bibliography
Indexes citations to journal articles, dissertations, and books about world literature, literary criticism, language, linguistics, and folklore from 1921 to the present.

Education Database

Education Source
Includes citations and full text articles from education research journals, books, and conference papers.

Finding Recent Articles in the Library Catalog Video

This video demonstrates how to find recent newspaper and peer reviewed articles in the Portland State University Library Catalog.

Search for a Known Article Video

Three Paths to Scholarly Articles

You can use any or all of the tools below to search for articles.

	Library Catalog: search box on the library homepage	Specific Subject Database	Google Scholar: search from the PSU Library website
Strengths	Covers articles from hundreds of scholarly journals, and newspapers; Searches over 400 databases at once, so article can be available in more than one database; Can see immediately whether one article is available in full text, or if not, request via Interlibrary Loan directly; For retrieval options anytime, anywhere, you need to sign in with your Odin account.	Has a more focused scope like economics or history; Better interface with more search options/limiters and discipline-specific subject keywords; You just need to sign in with your Odin account to access anytime, anywhere.	Journals from a wide range of subjects, including ones that are not indexed in the catalog; The Google search engine; Includes "Cited by" for articles; Access to open access articles with links.
Weaknesses	You need to know to lock the filters in order to change your keywords; Not all PSU full text journals are indexed here; May produce too many results; Must sign in first to see the full results and request options.	Missing journals in subject from other databases; May need to use Find it @ PSU to check for full text status; May have to order from Interlibrary loan through the Library website.	Lack of sophisticated search options/limiters May produce too many results; Must use Find it @ PSU to locate full text.
Best For	If you already have a citation (or at least the title of the article); if you are exploring a topic (especially an interdisciplinary one) and not sure where to start or what keyword(s) to use.	If you need to do subject-specific or advanced searches using various options/limiters.	If you already have a citation (or at least the title of the article); If you are exploring a topic ( an interdisciplinary one) and not sure where to start or what keyword(s) to use.