Electronic databases for Philosophy research
About databases
Databases are indexes to published material on a topic. The main emphasis is on journal articles, but often they also index important chapters in edited books, conference proceedings and other sources.
Many databases provide the full text of articles directly (look for an HTML or PDF link). However, some databases will only provide a citation and you will either have to click through for a full text link or search for the name of the journal in the libray catalogue (not all the journals indexed by a particular database will be in the library collection). If you find an article that is important to you, and it isn't available in our library in either online or print format, you can make use of the Document delivery service.
If you're using a database for the first time check out its help section to see what kind of search options it allows. For general help on using databases try the How do I find articles for my assignment? tutorial or listen to the podcast Make databases your friend.
Always access databases throught the catalogue or the links provided on the library website; otherwise you may be asked to pay for an article. If you are accessing electronic resources from a computer that is not on the UofA network (at home, for example) you will be asked to provide your user ID and password.
Note: all database links open in a new window/tab.
Major databases for philosophy
Philosophers Index
This is without doubt the most useful database for philosophy research. It provides indexing and abstracts of scholarly research published in journals and books, including contributions to anthologies and book reviews. The database covers the fifteen fields of philosophy: aesthetics, axiology, philosophy of education, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of history, philosophy of language, logic, metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, metaphilosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of science, social philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. The Philosopher's Index contains research published since 1940 including nearly 570 journals from 43 countries with content representing a variety of languages.
A plea: Access to the Philosopher's Index database by members of the University of Adelaide community is limited by licence restrictions. Please be sure to logout as soon as you have finished searching so that other users can have their turn.
Philpapers
PhilPapers is a directory of online philosophy articles and books by academic philosophers. It monitors journals in many areas of philosophy, as well as archives and personal pages. If you use the advanced search page you can save searches for later use, build bibliographies, monitor for new material.
Creating a user account gives you access to additional functions, including personal reading lists and bibliographies, participation in the discussion forums, and submission and editing of items. Every user has a profile page, which contains lists of the user's works and their areas of interest, among other things, and which can be made public or private as the user chooses.
In the journal archive, you can browse all online issues of more than 200 journals in philosophy. Current staff and students of the University of Adelaide can seamlessly download the full text of all articles in the archive that are from journals to which we subscribe.
Other useful databases
Academic Search Premier
Indexes and provides abstracts of articles from over 8,500 journals. Of these, full text is provided for over 4,600 journals, of which more than 3,900 are peer-reviewed. Coverage: social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, ethnic studies.
Academic OneFile
A collection of peer-reviewed, full-text articles in HTML and PDF format from more than 8,000 journals with extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, and literature. The publisher maintains a complete listing of journals covered by Academic OneFile, with details of dates of coverage.
JSTOR
A searchable collection of over 270 core journal titles in many disciplines. Coverage extends to all volumes except for the last few years, so it may not contain articles on very recent topics.
JSTOR citations can be exported in EndNote-compatible format.
Note to staff: JSTOR provides a stable URL for every article, which you can copy and paste into MyUni.
MathSciNet
The American Mathematical Society's Mathematical Reviews has provided reviews of the world's current mathematical literature since 1940. MathSciNet is a searchable database of those reviews, and provides abstracts and bibliographic information for much of the mathematical sciences literature. Citation data for journals, authors, articles and reviews is included which allows users to track the history and influence of research publications in the mathematical sciences. MathSciNet contains over 2 million items and over 1 million direct links to original articles. Over 100,000 new items are added each year.
Periodicals index online
A database of millions of article citations published in over 4,500 journals covering the arts, humanities and social sciences, across more than 300 years.
From the PIO results screen there is a link to Periodicals Archive Online which provides access to hundreds of online journals.
Australian Public Affairs - Full Text (APA-FT)
Includes citations (from 1978 onwards) and full text (from 1995 onwards) for journal articles, selected newspaper articles, conference papers and books in Australian business, health, current affairs, economics, humanities, law, literature, politics and social sciences. If APA-FT is not available, use APAIS (see below).
Australian Public Affairs Information Service (APAIS)
APAIS is an index only; it does not include full text. Use this database only if APA-FT (see above) is not available.
Web of Science WoS)
The WoS database includes the Arts & Humanities citation index and the Social Sciences citation index from 1980 onwards. Search by author, keyword or citation.
WoS is useful for finding articles that have cited a given article, and so are likely to be on a related topic.
Scopus
A large database with an emphasis on science but which indexes over 2800 social sciences, humanities journal titles. Covers 1980 onwards for topic searching. From 1996 onwards Scopus allows cited reference searching to find articles that have cited a given article.
Scopus has a free iPhone app, Scopus Alerts (Lite). Before using the app, you need to visit the Scopus site and register using your University of Adelaide email address.
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)
LLBA covers all aspects of the study of language including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. LLBA provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,500 journal publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, and dissertations. Coverage from 1973 onwards.
MLA
MLA (Modern Language Association) International Bibliography is a subject index to journal articles and books on modern languages, literatures, folklore, linguistics, cultural studies, film studies and media. With coverage from 1925 onwards, MLA indexes more than 4,400 journals as well as titles from some 1,000 book publishers.
Education Resources Information Center (ERIC)
The ERIC database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to provide extensive access to educational-related literature, covering the journal and research literature in the field of education research and practice. The content is rather US-centric but ERIC does provide coverage, from 1966 onwards, of journal articles, conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books and monographs.
PsycINFO
PsycINFO is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. It contains over 2.6 million citations and summaries dating as far back as the 1600s. Ninety-nine percent of the covered material is peer-reviewed. The database also includes information about the psychological aspects of related fields such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, technology, linguistics, anthropology, business, law, and others. Journal coverage, which spans from 1800s to the present, includes international material selected from more than 2,400 journals in nearly 30 languages.
Sociological abstracts
Sociological Abstracts indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,800 journals, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. Coverage is from 1952 onwards.
Newspaper databases
Factiva
Provides access to global news and business information, including full text coverage of Australian newspapers. Also provides facts and numbers from nearly 9,000 sources in 22 languages, including influential local, national and international newspapers, leading business magazines, trade publications, and newswires.
eLibrary Australasia
A database of full-text newspapers including Australian newspapers, full-text magazines, newswires, classic books, maps, and photographs, as well as major works of literature and art.
Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre
This resource provides access to many Australian and New Zealand newspapers in full text, including News Ltd. publications.
Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program
The Beta service includes a range of titles from every state and territory, from the earliest newspaper published in Australia in 1803 through to the mid 1950s; additional pages are being added each week. A list of the titles and date ranges scanned is available from the Selected Newspapers page.
Press Display
Provides a graphic interface for reading news online that retains the layout and content of a print newspaper edition. Instant access to more than 1400 newspapers from 82 countries in 39 languages, with coverage dating back sixty days.
Citation indexes
A citation index enables you to find articles published at a later date which cite a particular key reference (journal article, book, conference paper, etc.). A research trail can be followed forward from the year an article is published.
Moving from a known reference to more recent articles which cite it is an excellent way to follow scholarly discussion on a given topic. Researchers also use the number of citations to their own papers as a measure of the impact of their research: the higher the number of citations, the greater the impact.
Cited reference searching is a two-step process. First, you look up the reference you are interested in - you can search by cited author, cited work, or cited year - then you ask the database to retrieve the articles that cite that reference.
You can use citation indexes to find out how often a published work has been cited - for example, if you are interested, you can track citations to one of your own articles.
If you wish, you can set up a system that will let you know when any future citations to your article appear: see the section on Alerts and Saved searches. Two useful citation indexes are Web of Science and Scopus (see above for more information).
Alerts and Saved searches
Many databases allow you to save your searches online and will alert you when new articles on your topic are added to their files. Databases that index citations, such as Scopus and Web of Science, will also let you create document citation alerts. This means that you will be notified when a selected article is cited by another article.
A database Alert will usually be sent to you by email, or you may be able to sign up for an RSS feed. To set up an Alert you typically have to register with the database by filling in an online form with your contact details. You will usually also be asked to assign yourself a username and a password. You'll find that the process of setting up an Alert is similar on most databases and worth doing if you need to be sure to have the latest information that is published in your area of interest.
Journal rankings and impact factors
Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
A useful adjunct to the citation indexes, JCR is a comprehensive resource for journal evaluation using citation data drawn from scholarly and technical journals from more than 60 countries, and covering virtually all areas of science, technology, and social sciences. It provides rankings and impact factors by listing the most frequently cited journals in a field. Citation and article counts are important indicators of how frequently current researchers are using individual journals. By tabulating and aggregating citation and article counts, JCR offers a unique perspective for journal evaluation and comparison.
For hints on how to use JCR, visit Using Journal Citation Reports Wisely. If you want a thorough introduction to effective searching, try the JCR tutorial.
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