CMU LibGuides: Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology: Repression and Control in Dictatorships: Finding scholarly research

Google Scholar

Social and Decision Sciences Guide

For information about resources related to the Social & Decision Sciences, visit this research guide. It includes reference resources and key databases for the field of study.

Dissertations & Theses

Dissertations and theses can be rich sources of relevant resources and scholarly literature, as well as provide detailed research methodology. You can find the full text of dissertations and theses in the Dissertations & Theses Global Database.

CIRP Journal

CMU's Center for International Relations and Politics sponsors the CIRP Journal a print and online journal containing the work of undergraduate and graduate students on international relations and political science research.

Handbooks and Encyclopedias

Research Databases

Political Science Database This link opens in a new window
1985 - current. Access to hundreds of leading political science and international relations journals, providing full-text of many core titles. Over a thousand recent full-text doctoral dissertations, together with working papers, conference proceedings, country profiles, political news and other sources. Database Guide
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Use this link to configure Google Scholar to find full-text at the CMU Libraries. 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, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary database, with searchable author abstracts, covering the literature of the sciences, social sciences and the arts & humanities providing indexes and links to cited references for each article.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Articles in important academic journals from all disciplines (latest few years not available); also eBooks from leading academic publishers, as well as some images.
CQ Press Library This link opens in a new window
Search or browse resources on the American government, current affairs, history, politics, public policy, and data analysis for the social sciences. Database Guide.
ICPSR This link opens in a new window
A data archive of datasets related to social and political research, made available through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan. CMU affiliates have access to member-only data. To create an account, click Log In from the home page and then Create Account. Note that you must be in the CMU IP range when creating an account (either on campus, or using the Full VPN). Once an account is created, you can access the resource from any location using the link above. Use this guide for more info.
Human Rights Studies Online This link opens in a new window
Providing comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010.
Military Database This link opens in a new window
ca. 1916-present. Covers topics across all government and military branches, including international relations, political science, criminology, defense, aeronautics and space flight, communications, civil engineering, and more. An important benefit of it is its content diversity. Included are scholarly journals, trade and industry journals, magazines, technical reports, conference proceedings, government publications, and more. Database Guide
Annual Reviews This link opens in a new window
Critical reviews in biological, medical, physical, and social sciences.
PAIS Index This link opens in a new window
Public affairs, public and social policies, international relations, 1915-present. Database Guide
Policy File Index This link opens in a new window
Access to reports and information produced by prominent policy institutes, "think tanks" and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Security Issues Online This link opens in a new window
"Security Issues Online delves into conflicts, policies, and relationships that have impacted the global arena throughout modern history. At completion, this collection will include at completion 175 hours of video and 100,000 pages of printed materials (personal papers, organizations, government documents, journals, reports, monographs, and speeches)." - web site.

Searching Databases

Most databases allow the use of AND, OR and NOT to broaden or narrow and search.

AND will narrow the search to include only records with both terms.
OR with broaden the search to include records with either term.
NOT will narrow the search to exclude records with one of the terms.

Truncation: You can use an * at the end of a word stem to broaden your search to include related terms. For example, to search for child, children or childhood use the search term child*

Putting quotes "" around words allows you to search for a phrase. For example, searching language development, without quotes, finds records with both the word 'language' and 'development' somewhere in the record. Searching "language development", with quotes, only find records with the phrase "language development".

Example: How does bilingualism affect language development in children?

NOTE: When you begin doing advanced searching in a new database, look for the Help or Information sections to determine how that database works, and how it may differ from other databases with which you are familiar.