LibGuides: SOCL 213: Race, Crime and Justice (Weiner) Spring 2025: Databases and Journals

Is It Scholarly?

A scholarly article is one written by an expert for other experts. A peer-reviewed article is a scholarly article which has been reviewed and approved by a group of experts (the author's peers).

For your research, your secondary sources should be scholarly.

Some tips for identifying scholarly articles:

Most scholarly articles are published in academic journals or edited collections. Articles from magazines, trade journals, or newspapers are not scholarly. However, you can certainly use them as primary sources.
Scholarly articles will always include citations and a bibliography. Other articles generally include few or no citations, and will include only a brief bibliography or notes section if any at all.
Not all resources with citations are scholarly (for example, Wikipedia is not).
If you're not sure about a source, check for information like: the author's name/credentials; the publication it appears in or the publisher; or the intended audience.
Book reviews and editorials are never scholarly, even when published in scholarly journals.

Subject Specific Databases

SocINDEX This link opens in a new window
Journal articles, and citations for books, conference proceedings, and other resources, in the field of sociology.
ProQuest Criminal Justice This link opens in a new window
Academic and professional journal articles, reports, blogs and other sources relating to criminal justice.
Criminal Justice (Gale OneFile) This link opens in a new window
Journal articles and magazines about criminal justice, law and law enforcement, security and terrorism.
ProQuest Social Science This link opens in a new window
Academic and professional journal articles, dissertations, magazines, and news dealing with a variety of social science fields.

HeinOnline: Government, Politics & Law for Academics This link opens in a new window
A library of legal resources including law journals; government, legal and diplomatic documents; books; reports; and historical sources.

ERIC This link opens in a new window
Journal articles and magazines focused on education, in addition to reports and other tools designed for teachers.
ProQuest Education This link opens in a new window
Journal articles, magazines, dissertations, books and other sources relating to primary, secondary and higher education.

PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Citations and abstracts for journal articles, book chapters, books and dissertations in the field of psychology.
ProQuest Psychology Journals This link opens in a new window
Journal, magazine and news articles, dissertations, and other publications relating to psychology.
Health & Medicine (Gale OneFile) This link opens in a new window
Journal, magazine, and news articles, general information, images, videos, and audio on topics relating to medicine and consumer health.

America: History and Life This link opens in a new window
Journal articles, book chapters and magazines about the history of the United States and Canada, 1450-present.
JSTOR Arts & Sciences This link opens in a new window
Journal articles in almost every subject area, including some historical articles back to the 17th century.

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Journal articles, magazines, and news in almost every subject area.
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
Journal articles, magazines, and news in almost every subject area.
Alternative Press Index This link opens in a new window
Date(s): 1991-present
Citations from alternative, left-leaning, and radical journals and magazines.
JSTOR Arts & Sciences This link opens in a new window
Journal articles in almost every subject area, including some historical articles back to the 17th century.

Suggested Journals

Try searching directly in these specific journals for articles related to your topic. You can also browse issues of these journals for inspiration with choosing a topic.

Criminal Justice Policy Review
"Criminal Justice Policy Review (CJPR), published quarterly, is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal committed to the study of criminal justice policy through quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methodological approaches. CJPR serves as a bridge between academics, policymakers, and practitioners by publishing sound research that addresses important issues in crime and justice and examines the implementation and effectiveness of criminal justice policies, programs, and practices."
Criminology and Public Policy
"Criminology & Public Policy is interdisciplinary in nature, devoted to policy discussions of criminology research findings. Focusing on the study of criminal justice policy and practice, the central objective of the journal is to strengthen the role of research findings in the formulation of crime and justice policy by publishing empirically based, policy focused articles."
Feminist Criminology
"Feminist Criminology (FC), published quarterly, is an innovative journal dedicated to research related to women, girls, and crime within the context of a feminist critique of criminology. The official journal of the Division on Women and Crime of the American Society of Criminology, this international publication focuses on research and theory that highlights the gendered nature of crime."
Punishment & Society
"Punishment & Society is an international, interdisciplinary, peer reviewed journal that publishes the highest quality original research and scholarship dealing with punishment, penal institutions and penal control. It is a source of informed commentary and criticism regarding the penal policies and practices of our time. Punishment & Society includes theoretical and empirical contributions from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives including criminology and penology; the sociology of punishment and penal institutions; penal history; penal law; sentencing theory and the philosophy of punishment."

News Sources

New York Times Current This link opens in a new window
Date(s): 1980-present
Text-only articles from the New York Times. **Blogs are not included.**
ProQuest Newspapers This link opens in a new window
National and international news sources, including major titles like the Boston Globe, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, and LA Times.