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PS 3001: Research Methods in Political Science: Periodical Literature

An introductory guide for political science literature reviews.

Getting Started

It may be helpful to begin with this quick overview:  How to Write Research Proposals for Political Science.

Once you have chosen a political science research topic, you will need to do a literature review to see what else has been written on this subject. Use the links in this guide to help you search for scholarly articles in periodical literature and other academic writing in books, theses, and dissertations.

Multidisciplinary Library Databases

The JEWL search option allows you to search through hundreds of specialized and general interest databases.  If the results list is too overwhelming, then start with the smaller Academic Search Ultimate database. 

Literature Reviews: An Overview

This video  from North Carolina State University explains the basics of conducting an academic literature review.

Untrustworthy Journals (Predatory Publishers)

Cabell's Predatory Reports helps researchers and potential authors identify journals that are published using questionable, suspicious, or deceptive strategies.

Journals listed in this directory are designated as predatory.  Predatory publishers lie about their business practices for the purpose of pure profit; or in other words, they publish anything submitted by authors willing to pay the article processing fees.  The most common lies involve:

  • peer review practices
  • editorial board members
  • organizational affiliations
  • impact factors

Predatory publishers manufacture journal content that contaminates and undermines the trustworthiness of scholarly academic publishing.