Skip to Main Content

Guide for Social Welfare Policy

How Journal Articles Can Be Helpful for Policy Research

—Find out if researchers have done studies about effects of current policies on your topic?

—Find out if researchers have done pilot projects on proposed policy changes?

—Journal articles will not give you the most current information.  It can take over a year for journal articles to be published.  Search Google for reliable open access and news sources for more current information.

Databases for Journal Articles, Reports, Papers, Etc. on Policy Related Topics

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is an open source search tool that spans across many disciplines and sources: it is often a very good resource for finding materials that may not appear in subscription library databases such as reports from professional societies, preprint repositories, universities, research institutes and think tanks, and other scholarly organizations.

 

Search Journals One at a Time

Databases allow you to search many journals at once.  Here, you can search journals one by one.  This may be useful if you have already found out that a particular journal publishes a lot on your topic, or if you know there is a special issue on your topic.  You may access all these e-journals and more through the Hunter College Libraries website, and open the Journals tab