Doing research in international relations
POLS 55 – Ethics & IR
Simon Elichko (they/them)
Social Sciences & Data Librarian
We'll talk about navigating some common challenges:
- Paywalls & access
- You can find news, but not research
- Broken links
- Social media
Paywalls
"You've run out of free articles for the month..."
"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:
Swarthmore's News & Magazines Guide
How to set up access


How to find an article
Scholarly journal article
-
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)
-
Can't find it in Tripod? Apply the search filter Include results without full text to see more results.
(see this example)
• If your article title appears in the new results, click on it.
• Follow the prompt to login to Tripod, then click on Request via Interlibrary Loan.
• The request form should be filled out for you - just submit it!
News article (not research)
- Search Tripod for the publication title (e.g. Foreign Affairs), not the article title.
- Look for a matching result and follow links to access.
If the above steps don't work:
You can fill out the journal article request form to get a PDF by email.
Libraries share resources with each other (legally), and this is a free service - always free to you, and usually for the libraries as well. Turnaround time is typically 1-2 days.
Find request links on the Borrow Beyond TriCo, linked from Tripod.
Paywalls
News and research
Broken links
Social media
You can find news, but no scholarly research

Information Timeline Graphic by adstarkel. Used under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Think about the information timeline:
Try to diagnose the problem more precisely:
-
Events are too recent
- Is there research on what led up to the current situation?
- What are the broader issues involved?
- Try resources listed in the Think Tanks section of
the POLS 55 Research Guide
-
Nothing good is coming up in Google
- Try searching Tripod, Google Scholar, or another database
- Put any two-word phrase in quotes
examples: "climate change" "democratic peace"
-
Can't find the right kind of scholarly perspective
- Try searching the Web of Science database
- Use "Web of Science Categories" filter to pull up articles published in political science or international relations journals.
- Try searching the Web of Science database
You can find news, but not research
Another common problem:
There's way too much research, how to narrow it down?
Try strategies listed in Evaluating Sources
How to search within citing sources:
- Choose an article or book from class that seems potentially interesting for your project (e.g. "Liberalism and World Politics" - Doyle)
- Search for the article/book in Google Scholar
- Pull up the citing sources
- Enable "search within citing sources" and try some different keywords
Paywalls
News and research
Broken links
Social media
Broken links
Web Archives
If you come across a broken link, copy the URL + search for it using Wayback Machine.
Also useful for seeing what sites looked like at certain points in time
For example: Greenpeace anti-coal campaign in Greece
Paywalls
News and research
Broken links
Social media
Considerations for social media
How to search social media through Google:
Limit Google results to specific websites:
You can search multiple platforms at once:
railroad strike site:instagram.com | site:tiktok.com | site:reddit.com
Research beyond Google:
POLS 55 Research Guide
Simon's contact info
- Schedule an appointment (bit.ly/selichk1)
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