LibGuides: Philosophy: Find Articles

Article Databases and Indexes

These are the best places to start looking for articles in Philosophy. You can also see our full list of Electronic Resources.

Philosopher's Index
Index and abstracts for books and journals in philosophy and related fields, including ethics, aesthetics, social philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, and metaphysical logic.
* also includes material on the philosophy of law, religion, science, history, education, and language.
* Direct export to RefWorks
* Click 'Get It at StFX' icon to check for full text
JSTOR
Full-text collection of scholarly journals in multidisciplinary and discipline-specific collections.
Tip: Use 'Advanced Search' to limit to the subject collections appropriate to your search.
Project MUSE
Full-text access to articles in over 250 scholarly journal titles in the arts, humanities and social sciences from 40 university and society presses.
SAGE Journals Online
Full-text access to over 460 journals in Business, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Science, Technology and Medicine.
Web of Science
Huge multidisciplinary index of articles in over 8,500 journals, from 1989 to the present. (Includes: Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index)

Key Journals

There are many journals, both print and electronic, with valuable content for Philosophy research.

These are just some of the titles available in the library:

Using Citation Trails

Citation trails are a way of moving backwards and forwards in the research timeline, finding older or newer sources related to the books or articles you are using. There are a number of ways of using citation trails.

You can check the reference list, works cited list, or bibliography of a research source to find the sources which the authors used in their research. These sources might also be useful for you.
In Novanet, the library catalogue, you can use citation trail symbols which can be found in some article listings, like this one:

The first symbol, with the arrows pointing up, will lead to other sources which have cited this article. This will not be a complete list of all items which have cited this article; the system only links to sources to which we have access.

The second symbol, with the arrow pointing down, will lead to sources cited in the original article. Again, these will only be the sources to which we have access.

If you find a source listed in Google Scholar, you can use the "Cited by" tab underneath the listing to find other sources which have cited that source.
The database Web of Science includes Citations and References options for most articles, listing the sources which have cited the original article, as well as the sources cited within that article.

If you have any questions about using citation trails, please Ask a Librarian for help.

Search Google Scholar

Don't Pay: Get full text articles in Google Scholar

Look for the “Check for full text @ X” link next to each result. Use that link to get the full text via the Library’s subscriptions.

Configure your Google Scholar account

Link your Google account to StFX, so the “Check for full text @ X” links will always appear – even if you don’t start your search from this page. Go to our customized settings screen and click Save. If you’re logged into a Google account, it will remember that setting from now on.

» What is Google Scholar?
» How do I search Google Scholar?

How to Find Articles in Novanet

This short video shows how to find articles in Novanet, the Library Catalogue.