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:

How to find an article

Scholarly journal article

  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)
    • 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)

  1. Search Tripod for the publication title (e.g. Foreign Affairs), not the article title.
  2. 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

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.

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

Your algorithm vs. your research needs

 

See alternative approaches in the guide

How to search social media through Google:

Limit Google results to specific websites:

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

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