Articles are smaller in scope than books and can therefore focus on more particular aspects of a given topic. Since articles are faster to produce and publish, the most up-to-date research often appears in this form.
Peer reviewed journals require that articles are read and evaluated by experts (peer reviewers) in the field before being accepted for publication. Most articles published in scholarly journals are peer reviewed, but some content, such as book reviews, are not.
Indexes and databases contain a variety of types of articles including popular articles (published in magazines and/or newspapers and not peer reviewed) and scholarly, peer-reviewed articles (published in academic journals). Many of the library's subscription indexes and databases provide ways to limit your search to scholarly journals and peer reviewed articles.
Omni includes content from the various research databases to which Queen's Library subscribes but not everything is included. If you are looking for information on a very specific topic, or a topic that is subject specific, it is recommended that you search databases that specialize in that subject area for more thorough results.
Detailed information about how to search Omni is available in the Omni Search Tips guide.
Gender Studies Database
Indexes scholarly journals and popular magazines covering gender-engaged scholarship.
LGBTQ+ Source
Provides scholarly and popular LGBTQ+ publications in full text, plus historically important primary sources, including monographs, magazines and newspapers. It also includes a specialized LGBTQ+ thesaurus containing thousands of terms
Sociological Abstracts
Comprehensive index to the international literature of sociology and related disciplines.
Academic Search Complete
A large, multidisciplinary database providing thousands of full-text, peer-reviewed journals covering a broad spectrum of topics.
JSTOR
Large arts and humanities collection. Covers mass media, digital media, film, literature, music and performing arts.
Project Muse
Project Muse provides access to full-text scholarly journals in the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and more.
Google Scholar
Use the Google search engine to locate articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles published on the "open" web.
Enabling the Get it @ Queen's links
On campus: access to Queen's resources is available via Google Scholar (via Databases link).
Off-campus: access Google Scholar through the Queen's Library's link where you will have to enter your NetID and password
Going directly to Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.ca) will not indicate whether Queen's Library has the full text of the articles you find, so you will need to configure your Google Scholar preferences to allow automatic access to our Library subscriptions to journals and databases.
Scholar Preferences
Click on the Settings "gear" located in the upper right hand corner of the Google Scholar search page to view Scholar Preferences (choose Library Links and add Queen's University, Kingston - Get it at Queen's). Click save.
Indexes and databases contain a variety of types of articles including popular (magazine) and academic or scholarly or peer-reviewed (journals). It is important to know the difference so that the sources you use for your assignments are scholarly, not popular. For more information, consult the guide Distinguishing Scholarly from Non Scholarly Periodicals.
When searching the recommended databases on this guide you can limit or restrict your search results to return only scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles by selecting the appropriate "limiters" within the database:
If the full text of an article is not in the database you are searching, click on the Get it @ Queen's icon and follow the links (please note that not all articles are available online).