Finding Scholarly Articles on the Web
It is difficult to find scholarly articles on the web. The reason why they are not widely available through a Google search is that scholarly journals are very expensive and the publishers won't post the articles for free on the web. However, some publishers make a few articles available to attract subscribers and some searchers, who have retained the right to publish their articles after a certain amount of time, decide to post them on a web site or in a repository of scholarly research.
To find scholarly articles on the web, try the following:
Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other web sites.
Social Science Research Network
(SSRN) is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research. The site includes thousands of freely available research and working papers in the field of social sciences
Directory of Open Access Journal
Provides access to the full text of 2,200 journals. In addition 630 journals are searchable at the article level.
E-Scholarship Repository
Repository of scholarly research articles from the University of California
Should you use Google?
Even if scholarly articles are rarely available for free on the Web, you can still find a wealth of information provided by various organizations and individuals. Just remember that it will be up to you to evaluate the information you find on a web site and to see if it's reliable. A Google search is particularly useful to find:
Web sites of non-profit organizations
Current news on your topic
Factual information and statistics (often from government agencies)
To evaluate web sites, use the following handout: