Doing research in international relations

POLS 55 – Ethics & IR – 2/8/23
 

 

Simon Elichko (they/them)
Social Sciences & Data Librarian

What we'll talk about:

Paywalls

Broken links

Searching more effectively

Alternative search engines (beyond Google)

Paywalls

"You've run out of free articles for the month..."
"Buy this e-book..."   "Pay $45 for this article PDF..."

Paywalls Library Subscriptions

You can get articles from thousands of newspapers, magazines, and journals through Swarthmore's Libraries.

Find a specific article or publication:

Explore publications:

Accessing pay-walled articles

Scholarly / academic journal articles

  1. Search Tripod for the article title. Look for a matching result and follow links to access. (e.g. Teaching South African History in a Digital Age)
     
  2. Can't find it in Tripod? Apply the search filter Include results without full text to see more results. (see this example)

    Click on your article title if it appears in the results. Follow the prompt to login to Tripod, then click on Request via Interlibrary Loan.
     
  3. Still not seeing your article? Go to Borrow Beyond TriCo, then choose the journal article request link. Fill out the form to request a PDF of the article.

Web Archives
 

If you come across a broken link, copy the URL + search for it using Wayback Machine.

For example: updates from a Greenpeace anti-coal campaign
in Greece

 

Paywalls

Broken links

Search more effectively

Alternative search engines

 

Paywalls

Broken links

Search more effectively

Alternative search engines

Search Google more effectively:

Find results by date:

Yemen conflict after:2021-12-31
Yemen conflict before:2020

 

Remove results that include these terms:
 

nigeria vaccines -covid -covax

 

Results that mention at least one of these keywords:
 

"Western Kurdistan" | Rojava

How to search social media through Google:

Limit Google results to specific websites:

Yemen airstrikes site:bbc.com | site:nytimes.com

 

Paywalls

Broken links

Search more effectively

Alternative search engines

Research beyond Google:

POLS 55 Research Guide

Simon's contact info

 

Resources:

  • Case study research
  • Sources for scholarly debate
  • Evaluating individual articles and books
  • Databases  (including Web of Science)
  • Think tank research  (including Find Policy)
  • News