Political Science:
Skills & Tools for Navigating the Research Literature
• POLS 38 •
Simon Elichko (they/them)
Social Sciences & Data Librarian
• selichk1@swarthmore.edu •
When you're exploring the research in political science (or another field), you'll likely do a mix of these two things:
- Get recommended readings from a trustworthy source (e.g. your professor or a published literature review)
- Search for sources in search engines, databases, library catalogs (etc.)
Library research guide for POLS 38
Provides links to resources that can help with research in this class (and others).
- Sources for scholarly debate • links for finding literature reviews
- Find articles & books • links for finding peer-reviewed research
- Zotero at Swarthmore • info about tool for organizing articles etc.
- Google Scholar works best when you have specific, well-defined terminology to use as your keywords.
- It helps when the topic you're trying to research is mostly studied by scholars in the academic discipline you're working in.
- There are some real downsides to Google Scholar: it's not particularly selective, quality varies widely. But it's huge and posts newly-published research quickly.
- Example search that works fairly well in Google Scholar:
democratic backsliding- Why did this work well? Most of the research using this term was done by political scientists and is published in political science journals.
Can't find a PDF full text link? Hitting a paywall?
Look up the article/book in Tripod!
(If needed, try the filter "Include results without full text.")
- Web of Science is particularly helpful for finding research when your topic has been studied by multiple academic disciplines.
- For example, it can be helpful for finding social scientific scholarship on topics that get a lot of attention from researchers in the life sciences.
- Use this filter: Web of Science Categories
- Web of Science is great to use when you need to find peer-reviewed research, but you're unfamiliar with the journals in the field(s) you're studying.
- Like JSTOR, Web of Science focuses on helping people find peer-reviewed scholarship.
- Unlike Google Scholar, Web of Science is a selective index - not all journals are included.
- Example search in Web of Science: vaccinations (236,000 articles)
- Here are those search results filtered to
show only articles published in Political Science journals (181 articles)
- Here are those search results filtered to
on-campus: https://www.webofscience.com
off-campus: get the link from Tripod
- ProQuest Social Science database is helpful when there's a lot of research that's broadly related to your topic, but you need to find research focusing on a particular aspect of it.
- Like books in Tripod, the topics in each article are tagged. You can use these tags (called Subjects) to narrow your search.
- You can also find dissertations (PhD student theses) in here.
Use the link in the POLS 38 Research Guide
or the Database Finder. (You can't Google this one.)
Research Help & Advice
Reach out to talk about your ideas, projects, questions
Discussing your work and asking questions is a great way to build skills
You can get help setting up and using Zotero and other tools
Simon Elichko (social sciences librarian)
- Make an appointment: bit.ly/selichk1
- Email selichk1@swarthmore.edu
Email librarian@swarthmore.edu
- You'll reach all of the subject librarians and someone will follow up with you
Chat in Tripod
- If chat is open, a real human will answer your question! :)