What is a periodical?
Article Indexes
The principal database for identifying scholarly journal articles in U.S. history is:
- America: History & Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Alternate version: America: History & Life with Full Text in the classic EBSCO user interface (best for exporting more than 50 results or combining saved searches). Index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database indexes journals from 1964 to present and includes citations and links to book and media reviews.
Article indexes for environmental science:
- CAB Abstracts This link opens in a new windowCAB Abstracts is a bibliographic database covering research and development literature in the fields of agriculture, forestry, aspects of human health, human nutrition, animal health, and the management and conservation of natural resources from 1910 to date. Also available on the CABI Digital Library platform.
- Web of Science (Core Collection) This link opens in a new windowWeb of Science indexes core journal articles, conference proceedings, data sets, and other resources in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.
- GreenFILE This link opens in a new window
Alternate version: GreenFILE in the classic EBSCO user interface (best for exporting more than 50 results or combining saved searches). GreenFILE offers well-researched but accessible information covering all aspects of human impact on the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles include content on the environmental effects of individuals, corporations and local/national governments, and what can be done on each level to minimize negative impact. Topics covered include global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. GreenFILE is multidisciplinary by nature and draws on the connections between the environment and a variety of disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology.
- Scopus This link opens in a new windowScopus is the largest abstract and citation database including peer-reviewed titles from international publishers, Open Access journals, conference proceedings, trade publications and quality web sources. Subject coverage includes: Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Engineering; Life and Health Sciences; Social Sciences, Psychology and Economics; Biological, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Article indexes for activism (including environmental activism:
- Left Index This link opens in a new window
Alternate version: Left Index in the classic EBSCO user interface (best for exporting more than 50 results or combining saved searches). The Left Index (LI) is a guide to the diverse literature of the left, with an emphasis on political, economic, social and culturally engaged scholarship both inside and outside of academia. A secondary emphasis is on significant but little known sources of news and ideas. Other topics covered include the labor movement, ecology and environment, race and ethnicity, social and cultural theory, sociology, art and aesthetics, philosophy, history, education, law, and globalization.
- Alternative Press Index This link opens in a new window
Alternate version: Alternative Press Index Archive in the classic EBSCO user interface (best for exporting more than 50 results or combining saved searches). The Alternative Press Index is a subject index to over 300 alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines. The Index is international and interdisciplinary, spanning the social sciences and humanities, with its central focus on the practice and theory of socialism, national liberation, labor, indigenous peoples, gays/lesbians, feminism, ecology, democracy, and anarchism.
- Alt-PressWatch This link opens in a new windowThis database provides full-text articles for over 210 publications of the alternative and independent presses, from 1970 to current.
Environmental History journals
- Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History"Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History is an open-access, peer-reviewed publication platform for short, illustrated, and engaging environmental histories. Embedded in a particular time and place, each story focuses on a site, event, person, organization, or species as it relates to nature and human society. By publishing digitally on the Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia promotes accessibility and visibility of original research in global environmental history and cognate disciplines."
- Environmental History"Environmental History (EH) is the world’s leading scholarly journal in environmental history and the journal of record in the field. Scholarship published in EH explores the changing relationships between humans and the environment over time. This interdisciplinary journal brings together insights from geography, anthropology, the natural sciences, science and technology studies, political ecology, and many other disciplines to inform historical scholarship."
- International Review of Environmental History"International Review of Environmental History takes an interdisciplinary and global approach to environmental history. It publishes on all thematic and geographical topics of environmental history, but especially encourages articles with perspectives focused on or developed from the southern hemisphere and the ‘Global South’. This includes but is not limited to Australasia, East and South East Asia, Africa and South America.
International Review of Environmental History’s editorial board includes historians, scientists and geographers, as well as scholars from other backgrounds, who work on environmental history and related disciplines, such as ecology, garden history and landscape studies. The methodological breadth of International Review of Environmental History distinguishes it from other environmental history journals, as does its attempt to draw together cognate research areas in garden history and landscape studies.
The journal’s goal is to be read across disciplines, not just within history. " - Journal for the History of Environment and Society"The Journal for the History of Environment and Society aims to be a leading online and open-access periodical that covers all aspects of environmental history conceived in its broadest sense. The journal encourages high-quality scholarship which focuses on relations between environmental changes and social-historical context. Interregional and international comparative articles receive special attention. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the discipline, papers should be accessible for scholars from all disciplines in the field, which will also ensure their accessibility to a wider audience. Geographically, the Journal focuses primarily – but not exclusively – on North-West Europe (including areas that had historical relations with that broad region). Articles with a more general geographic scope can also be published in the Journal."
- Resilience: Journal of the Environmental Humanities"Resilience is a digital, peer-reviewed journal that provides a forum for scholars from across humanities disciplines to speak to one another about their shared interest in environmental issues and to plot out an evolving conversation about what the humanities contribute to living and thinking sustainably in a world of dwindling resources. The focus on narrative skill, critical thinking, historicity, culture, aesthetics and ethics central to the humanities and to humanistic social sciences provides a crucial research complement to the endeavors of scientists in addressing current planetary crises, and the mission of Resilience is to share that perspective with a broad academic audience."
Digitized Journal Collections
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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Provides page images of back issues of the core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and basic sciences from the earliest issues to within a few years of current publication. Users may browse by journal title or discipline, or may search the full-text or citations/abstracts. New issues of existing titles and new titles are added approximately on a weekly basis. The University of Illinois has access to the following JSTOR collections: Arts & Sciences I-XV, 19th Century British Pamphlets, Business IV, Global Plants, Hebrew Journals, Ireland, Life Sciences Collection, Lives of Literature, Security Studies, Struggles for Freedom - South Africa, Sustainability, and World Heritage Sites - Africa. - Project Muse This link opens in a new windowFull-text articles from more than 200 scholarly journals in history and the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences. Disciplines covered include literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others. A brief bibliographic description of each title is given. Searches can be conducted across the full text of all journals in the database.
- Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window
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Periodicals Archive Online is a major archive that makes the backfiles of scholarly periodicals in the arts, humanities and social sciences available electronically, providing access to the searchable full text of hundreds of titles. The database spans more than two centuries of content, 37 key subject areas, and multiple languages.
From Citation to Source: Journal Articles
If you have a citation for a journal article, and you want to obtain a copy of that article, the first step is to check to see if we have online access to the article:
- Journal and Article LocatorSearch for journals and journal articles by name or DOI.
If the Library does not have online access to the journal/article, the next step is to determine whether the Library owns a print copy of the journal. For this, the information you need is the title of the journal, not the title of the article.
- University of Illinois Library Catalog: Journal SearchA catalog of the Library's journal collection, with emphasis on online journals and periodicals. Most useful as a catalog of e-journals, but you can also use it to locate print copies.
If the Library has a print copy of the journal, you can either retrieve it yourself and scan the article, or you can request a scan of the article via Doc Express. If the Library doesn't have the journal at all, you can use Interlibrary Loan to request a scan of the article (library staff will find it at another library and have it scanned for you). This service is quick --it usually only takes a day or two.
Learn more about newspapers
Finding newspapers in the Library
The Library has an extensive collection of historical newspapers in a variety of formats, including original print, microfilm, and digital reproductions. Not all of them are included in the online catalog, but if you are looking for a particular newspaper title, you should use the UIUC Newspaper Database (see below for link).
Many newspapers are embedded in larger collections of online resources, such as Ethnic News Watch (1960-present ). They may also be embedded in microfilm collections, such as the Underground Press Collection (1963-1985).
To find a specific newspaper, or to identify newspapers published in a specific year or place, or newspapers published for a specific audience (e.g. African Americans, or socialists), or to identify newspapers that are part of larger collections like the Underground Press Collection, use the University of Illinois Library Newspaper Database:
- University of Illinois Library Newspaper Database
A catalog of newspapers at the University of Illinois Library. Lists newspapers in all formats--print, microfilm, and digitized. You can search for newspapers by title, or identify newspapers by place of publication, date of publication, or by the newspaper's subject or intended audience. Only includes newspapers that are either the original print publication, or else facsimile reproductions of the original print publication.
To find collections of newspapers by geographic, temporal, or thematic categories, see our guide to finding historical newspapers: