What are article indexes?
Article indexes are a type of bibliography. The purpose of bibliography is to list documents, usually published documents like books and articles.
For more information on the role of bibliography in historical research, see our guide to Bibliography and Historical Research.
Bibliographies can be as short as a few pages, or as long as several hundred volumes. Bibliographies can also be published as databases, and these are the bibliographies that are often called "article indexes" or "indexing and abstracting services" because they index the contents of journals.
Because article indexes are a form of bibliography, and not a catalog, you can use them to discover articles from journals the Library doesn't even own. An article index, therefore, enables you to cast the widest possible net within whatever field the article index covers. If you discover an article from a journal that the Library does not own, you can request a copy of the article through interlibrary loan. Most online article indexes include links to interlibrary loan, but you can also go directly to interlibrary loan if you have a complete citation (see below).
To get started looking for journal articles, you can either use a broad, interdisciplinary article index/database or one that focuses on your subject area.
Interdisciplinary search tools
- EBSCO DiscoverySearch across all article databases (and other bibliographic resources) hosted on the EBSCO platform.
- Easy SearchBroad based search for materials accessible through the University Library
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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JSTOR is a fulltext collection of scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and basic sciences. Although it is not technically an article index, it is often a great place to start, IF you have very specific keywords. - 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.
- Web of Science (All Databases Search) This link opens in a new windowEasily search across all subscribed Web of Science databases simultaneously using a common set of search fields for the most comprehensive results. Web of Science indexes core journal articles, conference proceedings, data sets, and other resources in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.
Articles about Medieval Studies
These article indexes/databases focus primarily on medieval Europe, with some materials relating to north Africa and the Middle East:
- Brepolis Medieval and Early Modern Bibliographies This link opens in a new windowThe Brepolis Medieval and Early Modern Bibliographies are multidisciplinary bibliographies of Europe, North Africa and the Near East (300-1500), founded in 1967 with the aim of providing a comprehensive, current bibliography of articles in journals and miscellany volumes (conference proceedings, essay collections or Festschriften) worldwide. The bibliographies comprise 365,000 articles, all of which are fully classified by date, subject and location, and provide full bibliographical records.
- Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance This link opens in a new windowContains electronic resources for researchers in the study and teaching of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Enables users to access citations in journal, book, and reviews databases; provides online access to Paul Oskar Kristeller's Iter Italicum (a finding list of Renaissance humanistic manuscripts); provides access to the International Directory of Scholars (a comprehensive directory of contact information, and information on the research and teaching careers of scholars around the world). Subscription includes a membership to the Renaissance Society of America.
If your geographic focus is outside Europe, you will also want to consult one or more of these:
- Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) This link opens in a new windowContains citations to articles in more than 400 scholarly journals published in Latin America or treating Latin American and U.S. Hispanic topics.
- Bibliography of Asian Studies This link opens in a new windowThis on-line version of the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) contains 787,165 records on all subjects (especially in the humanities and the social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia published worldwide from 1971 to the present... In addition to entries compiled since 1997, the online BAS includes the full data of all of the printed volumes of the BAS issued from the 1971 up to the 1991 volumes (published in 1997)... Through the 1991 printed volume, the BAS included citations to Western-language periodical articles, monographs, chapters in edited volumes, conference proceedings, anthologies, and Festschriften, etc. Monographs published since 1992, however, have not been added to the database, and users seeking such monographs are urged to consult other general resources and databases such as WorldCat.. Use Bibliography of Asian Studies in the NEW EBSCO user interface.
- American Bibliography of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies This link opens in a new window
Covers North American scholarship on East-Central Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet Union. Contains bibliographic records for journal articles, books and book chapters, book reviews, dissertations, online resources, and selected government publications.
- Index Islamicus This link opens in a new windowIndex to literature on Islam, the Middle East and Muslim areas of Asia and Africa, and Muslim minorities elsewhere. Includes citations to over 2,000 journals, conference proceedings, monographs, and book reviews from 1906 to present. Use Index Islamicus in the NEW EBSCO user interface.
Articles on post-Medieval topics
- America: History & Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
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.
- Anthropology Plus This link opens in a new window
Anthropology Plus combines Anthropological Literature from Harvard University and the Anthropological Index, Royal Anthropological Institute from the UK. Anthropology Plus provides worldwide indexing of journal articles, reports, commentaries, edited works, and obituaries in the fields of social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, folklore, material culture, and interdisciplinary studies. The index offers coverage of all core periodicals in the field in addition to local and lesser-known journals. Coverage is from the late 19th century to the present.
- ATLA Religion Database with ATLA Serials This link opens in a new window
The ATLA Religion Database is a comprehensive database designed to support religious and theological scholarship in graduate education and faculty research. The file contains citations from international titles and 13,000 multi-author works in and related to the field of religion. It also includes a full range of index citations to journal articles, essays in multi-author works, book reviews, and Doctor of Ministry projects from ATLA's print indexes: Religion Index One (RIO), Religion Index Two (RIT), and Index to Book Reviews in Religion (IBRR). Though coverage is from 1949 to the present, not all publications began in 1949.
- Film & Television Literature Index This link opens in a new windowFilm & Television Literature Index is a comprehensive bibliographic database covering the entire spectrum of television and film writing. It has been designed for use by a diverse audience that includes film scholars, college students, and general viewers. Subject coverage includes film & television theory, preservation & restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews--Database description screen. Use Film & Television Literature Index in the NEW EBSCO user interface.
- GenderWatch This link opens in a new windowGenderWatch is a full text database of unique and diverse publications that focus on how gender impacts a broad spectrum of subject areas. With its archival material, dating back to 1970 in some cases, GenderWatch is a repository of important historical perspectives on the evolution of the women's movement, men's studies, the transgendered community, and the changes in gender roles over the years. Publications include scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books, and NGO, government and special reports.
- Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new windowCovers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. Provides indexing of more than 1,700 academic historical journals in over 40 languages back to 1955. Use Historical Abstracts with Full Text in the NEW EBSCO user interface.
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new windowIndexes critical materials on literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Proved access to citations from worldwide publications, including periodicals, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations and bibliographies. Use MLA International Bibliography in the NEW EBSCO user interface.
- Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new windowAbstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides citations from 1952 to the present to journal articles, book reviews, books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. Major areas of coverage include culture and social structure; demography and human biology; economic development; environmental interactions; evaluation research; family and social welfare; health and medicine and law; history and theory of sociology; management and complex organizations; mass phenomena and political interactions; methodology and research technology; policy, planning, forecast and speculation; radical sociology; religion and science; rural and urban sociology; social development; social differentiation; social psychology and group interaction; sociology of the arts, business, education; studies in violence and power; substance abuse and addiction; welfare services; women's studies.
- Worldwide Political Science Abstracts This link opens in a new windowProvides abstracts and indexing of the international literature of political science and international relations, along with complementary fields, including international law and public administration/policy. Provides abstracts of journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations and working papers, and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,500+ serials publications.
- Communication Source This link opens in a new windowOffers information from over 600 journals in communication, mass media and related fields; includes abstracts, indexing, bibliographical citations and author profiles, as well as full text from more 240 titles. Use Communication Source in the NEW EBSCO user interface.
Digitized Journal Collections
There are several major collections of full-text electronic journals. In these databases you can browse individual issues of journals, or you can do a search across the entire database. Most of the journals in the following collections are scholarly journals:
- 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.
From Citation to Article
If you have a citation for a journal article (for example, from a footnote in another article), and you want to obtain a copy of that article, you can start by searching to see if we have online access to the article. You will need information from the citation, including the title of the journal in which the article is published, the title of the article, and the author's name, to search in:
- Journal and Article LocatorSearch for journals and journal articles by name or DOI.
If this fails, you will next need to determine whether the Library owns a copy of the specific issue of the journal in which the article appears. Therefore, the most important piece of information at this stage is the title of the journal, not the title of the article.
To determine whether the Library owns the journal, you will search the regular Library Catalog:
- University of Illinois Library CatalogUse the Library Catalog to identify books, journals (but not journal articles), microform collections, and digital collections owned by the University of Illinois. The Library Catalog is the primary tool for exploring the collections of the University of Illinois Library, the second largest academic library collection in the United States. In the Library Catalog you can search for books by subject, and you identify the location within the Library of a particular book or journal. Books and journals are organized in the library by subject. Each item is assigned one or more subject headings and a unique call number. Subject headings are standardized terms from the Library of Congress. The call number is based on the Dewey Decimal Classification or Library of Congress Classification. Boolean operators must be capitalized if used: AND, OR, NOT. Interface automatically truncates some search terms unless Boolean operators are used within the same query line. You can also browse catalog records by call number, creating a "virtual shelf browsing" experience.
If the Library does not have a print copy of the journal, then you will use your complete citation to request a copy through interlibrary loan:
- ILLiad (Interlibrary Loan)If the item is not available in the Illinois catalog and it is not available through I-Share, then your next stop will be Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery. Login to Interlibrary Loan using your NetID and password. If you are requesting a book, then select "Request a Book". If you are requesting a journal article, then select "Request a Photocopy". Be sure to fill out as much of the form as possible. You'll be notified by email when your item is ready to be picked up. If you requested a journal article, it will probably be sent to you electronically as a PDF.
Interlibrary loan can usually obtain a journal article for you very quickly (much faster than for books), sometimes within one day.