Skip to main content

Finding Articles and more: Sociology Databases

Core sociology databases

Though journal articles covering issues of interest to sociologists and sociology students can be found in resources from virtually all subject areas, the databases below are often the best places to start for sociology courses and topics:

  • SOCIndex: On EBSCO, the same platform as Academic Search Complete, but more focused on sociological literature.
  • Academic Search Complete: large, multidisciplinary and easy to use; includes lots of full-text articles.
  • Sociological Abstracts: an authoritative well-indexed source that includes scholarly/academic sociology journals and topics.
  • Google Scholar: a simple and powerful way to broadly search for scholarly articles, reports and books. If if you are a novice searcher, however, it may not be easy to decipher the list of results.

Canada & Québec: News and academic sources

For news, magazine and journal articles of Canadian origin or covering Canadian subjects (but not necessarily academic or anthropological material) start with these general sources:

  • Canadian Newsstream: full-text access to Canadian daily newspapers including the Gazette.
  • Eureka.cc: full text access to English and French language Québec & Canadian newspapers , magazines, newswires, blogs and broadcast transcripts.
  • ProQuest Combined Canadian: indexes a wide variety of Canadian sources, from newspapers, transcripts and newsletters, to academic journals and theses.
  • Canadian Periodical Index (CPI-Q): newspapers, magazines, journals.
  • Factiva: Full text of international newspapers (including Canadian), transcripts and newswires (license for only one user at a time).
En français
  • Eureka.cc: full text access to English and French language Québec & Canadian newspapers , magazines, newswires, blogs and broadcast transcripts.
  • Érudit: academic journal articles, theses, books and book chapters - mostly from Québec.
  • Repère: magazine and academic journal articles, mostly from Québec. No full text.

Related subject databases & research guides

Below is a sampling of additional useful sources for sociology research:

Specialized databases:

See also Anthropology Databases First Peoples Studies and Research Guides in all other subject areas.

Multi-subject databases:
  • Web of Science: includes social sciences, humanities, arts. Offers citation searching.
  • Scopus: large multidisciplinary database. also offers citation searching.

Background: review journals & encyclopedias

ENCYCLOPEDIAS can provide that all-important background and context for research papers. Here is a sampling:


REVIEW or SURVEY journals try to give an overview of a topic or research area, and provide long lists of references. Here are two to try:

Dissertations and theses

NOTE: See also Concordia University Library's guide on How to find theses.

Back to top

© Concordia University