Guides: ANTH 4550: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity: Journal Articles

Searching for scholarly articles

When you want to search for peer-reviewed or "scholarly" journal articles, it's best to start on the library website and search using the library resources. There are several ways you can search the journals in the UNT Libraries collection.

Choose one database to search within. Library databases are collections of information; many of them are collections of journals. Some contain literature from multiple disciplines and some are subject specific. AnthroPlus contains anthropology literature, while Race Relations Abstracts contains literature from multiple social science disciplines. Several relevant databases are linked below in the "Scholarly article databases" box.
Search in the "Online Articles" tab on www.library.unt.edu. This searches within almost ALL of the library databases. Results will be multidisciplinary and plentiful.
Choose just one journal to browse or search within. To find out if the UNT Libraries have full text for a specific journal, you can search for the journal title in the "e-journals" tab on www.library.unt.edu.

Once you have decided where you will conduct your search, you will want to read and apply the information in the "Search Tips" and "How to Develop Keywords" boxes below. Searching in the library databases requires a more thoughtful approach than crafting a search query for a web search engine such as Google.

Search Tips

In general, when searching the library databases...

Keywords are...

A good way to start a search.
The important concepts in your own words.
Found anywhere in the article (title, author, subject terms, etc.).

Use Quotation Marks to Search for a Phrase...

Searching for "Quality of life" will bring back only results that have the words in that exact order.

Connecting the concepts (keywords)...

Link different parts of your topic with "AND" to get results that contain both terms.
Join similar ideas or synonyms with "OR" to find results that contain either of the terms.
Exclude concepts with "NOT"

Search for a root word...

Add an * at the end of a word to search for all possible endings/suffixes
teen* will search for teen, teens, teenager, teenagers

Limit to Peer-Reviewed, Refereed or Scholarly articles...

Peer-review is part of the publication & editorial process for academic and research journals. Being peer-reviewed is a sign that a paper's author(s) have done a certain level of due diligence in their work and their research is complete, manages conflicts-of-interest, and is fair and objective.

Narrow the Date Range...

When looking for current research limit your date range to the last 5-10 years.

Still not finding anything? Ask your Librarian!

How to Develop Keywords

When searching the library databases for articles, typing an entire sentence or question into the search field will not produce good results. Instead use keywords that describe your topic.

Developing Keywords

Identify the important nouns or main ideas in your research question. For example:

Research Question: What are the consequences of the spread of incorrect health information on social media?

Generate synonyms for each main term, along with words that are narrower, broader, and related.

Incorrect information: deceit, manipulation, lies, false, misinformation, fake news
Social media: online, websites, internet, social networking
Health: wellness, physical wellbeing, medical

Start searching in a database and connect your keywords with AND, OR, and, NOT as appropriate

A search for this topic could look like:
- misinformation AND health AND social media
- incorrect information AND medical AND social networking websites
- (lies OR false information) AND health AND online

Pay attention to the results and modify your keywords as necessary.

Titles and abstracts in the results may help you identify new keywords
Keep in mind that keywords will evolve as you search. The more you search and learn about your topic, the easier it will be to develop keywords and search for more relevant articles.

How to Create Keywords Video Tutorials

Developing Keywords Tutorial by University of Houston Libraries
Search Keywords Tutorial by Ray W. Howard Library at Shoreline Community College

Keyword Generators

How to Generate Keywords - University of Texas Libraries
Search Strategy Generator - University of Michigan Library

Scholarly article databases

Race relations abstracts
Race Relations Abstracts includes bibliographic records selected from the most important sources within the discipline covering essential areas related to race relations, including ethnic studies, discrimination, immigration studies, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline. Dates of Coverage: 1975 current.
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
The International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) is a database that includes over 3 million bibliographic references to journal articles, books, reviews, and selected chapters dating back to 1951. It provides broad coverage of international material and incorporates over 100 languages and countries. Subjects covered include anthropology, archaeology, cultural studies, demography, economics, education, ethnology and ethnography, political science, religious studies, and sociology.
AnthropologyPlus
AnthropologyPlus a comprehensive, focused index of bibliographic materials covering the fields of anthropology, archaeology and interdisciplinary studies. Anthropology Plus unites two premier indexes: Harvard Universitys Anthropological Literature database and the United Kingdoms Anthropological Index (Royal Anthropological Institute). This database offers indexing of periodicals and journals from the early 19th century to today, providing indexing of thousands of sources, including journal articles, reports, commentaries, edited works and obituaries.
Chicano Database
Chicano Database is produced by the Ethnic Studies Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and is hosted on the familiar EBSCOhost platform. This bibliographic index covers a wide range of materials focused on the Mexican-American and Chicano experience, as well as the broader Latino experience of Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Central American immigrants since 1992. Its content is designed to further research, teaching, and scholarship for Chicano studies programs and extended ethnic studies curricula, giving researchers targeted access to materials that explore the broad dimensions of class, race, and gender within the Chicano and Latino U.S. experience.
Bloomsbury Cultural History Database
Bloomsbury Cultural History provides access to Bloomsbury's Cultural Histories series via a single cross-searchable and browsable interface. The Cultural Histories Series offers a survey of a wide range of subjects spanning Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, and the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-first Centuries.

ANTH 4550: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity: Journal Articles

Searching for scholarly articles

Search Tips

How to Develop Keywords

Scholarly article databases

Additional Links