Research Guides: Social Work Policy Sources: Journals

Evaluating information from scholarly journals

What are scholarly journals and what should we consider in evaluating the information they produce?

Scholarly journals have articles that are typically written by scholars: they have doctorates and are experts in their field. Scholarly journal articles are therefore likely to be of good, quality research. They can also be a great source for more recent information, because they can take a short amount of time to be published.

Social Work Journals Online

Social Work Databases

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Provides access to hundreds of full-text journals covering topics in emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry & psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational and experimental methods
Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Includes full text and bibliographic records of leading journals in the criminal justice field.
PILOTS This link opens in a new window
Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress provides citations to all literature on post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD
APA PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Index to articles and other research materials in all the fields of psychology
MEDLINE This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, this database uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing.
Social Work Abstracts This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Provides citations and abstracts dealing with all aspects of the social work field, including theory and practice, areas of service and social issues and problems.
Social Work Reference Center This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Offers evidence-based disease & condition information written specifically for social workers, drug & reference information from AHFS and continuing education modules
SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive coverage of sociology, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study, including ethnic and racial studies, gender studies, political sociology, socio-cultural anthropology, sociological history, and more.