Bachelor of Social Work: Databases & Journals

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Key Social Work Databases

Academic Search Elite provides full text for over 3000 journals across all academic disciplines, useful for all social science topics.  Limit to scholarly/peer-reviewed journals.

APA FT contains the full text of the top 200 Australian journals indexed in APAIS, the Australian Public Affairs Information Service. Works in conjunction with the database, Humanities and Social Sciences. You will need to search both to cover the Social Sciences in Australia. 

Families & Society Collection includes peer-reviewed journals from government and specialist associations tackling modern debates on topics including non-traditional families, parenting, marriage, divorce, division of labour, working mothers, birth rates and ageing.

Humanities and Social Sciences Collection provides access to a range of Australian journals, books, reports, conference proceedings, research papers and reference materials. It covers psychology, counselling, childcare, unemployment, family law, health, housing, and domestic violence.

JSTOR Arts and Sciences Collections provide full-text backfiles of scholarly journals in the social sciences. Because of JSTOR's archival mission, there is a gap, typically from 1 to 5 years, between the most recently published journal issue and the content available in JSTOR. 

ProQuest One Academic allows access to the extensive collection of scholarly journals, ebooks, dissertations, news and videos. ProQuest One Academic includes these four multidisciplinary collections: ProQuest Central, Academic Video Online, Academic Complete, and ProQuest Dissertations and Cheses. You can search multiple databases' content simultaneously or focus your search on the specific database using the Databases link on the top menu. 

Social Work Online includes recently published social work textbooks, compelling documentaries, clinical demonstration videos, and engaging lectures that illustrate the complex and challenging realities social work students face as practitioners.   

CINAHL – is a bibliographic database containing full text from nursing and allied health journals.

Health Collection  - is a new full text online database which delivers cover-to-cover access to core content from the Australasia region. Content includes research articles, reports and case studies of practical support to anyone studying or working in therapeutic, diagnostic and preventative health roles.

MEDLINE – contains citations and abstracts of articles from over 4,600 current biomedical journals. 

PSYCINFO - contains citations and abstracts of articles from nearly 2000 psychology journals, plus book chapters, books, technical reports, as well as citations to dissertations.

SCOPUS – a citation tracking database of over 15,000 peer-reviewed journals and web sources.

Web of Science - indexes over 10,000 peer reviewed journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities, as well as international proceedings coverage for over 120,000 conferences.

SRMO (Sage Research Methods Online) - is a research methodology tool that contains over 600 books, dictionaries, encyclopedias and handbooks, including the entire "Little Green Book" and "Little Blue Book" SRMO also includes the ‘Methods Map’ feature to help you explore different methodologies. 

The following are some of the databases from the ProQuest Central collection that may be particularly helpful:

Australia & New Zealand Database  includes ongoing full-text academic journals published in Australia and New Zealand

Health & Medical Collection covers consumer health, health administration, and related topics 

Psychology Database provides coverage of a wide range of topics on clinical and social psychology, communication, criminology, addiction, neurology and social welfare

Social Science Database offers indexing and full text for hundreds of academic journals, providing extensive coverage across a wide range of social science disciplines

Sociology Database provides access to international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioural sciences. 

WILEY Online Library - A full-text database of science and social science journals. 

Science Direct provides full-text access to the last 4 years of all Elsevier journals. 

SpringerLink a full text database providing access to Springer-Verlag titles online. 

Oxford University Press includes almost 190 journals covering a broad range of subject disciplines. 

SAGE Journals SAGE publishes over 460 of the key research journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences. 

SAGE Catalyst- Social work & Social policy collection SAGE Catalyst provides access to social science textbooks with virtual collaboration, classroom discussion, and peer-to-peer learning enabled within the textbooks.

Taylor & Francis Online provides access to journals published by the Taylor & Francis Group, covering the areas of science and technology, social sciences and humanities, and medicine.

Finding Peer-Reviewed Journals: tips

You may be required to find peer-reviewed journal articles. There are several ways to find out if the article source is peer-reviewed.  

EBSCOhost databases and ProQuest databases allow limiting your search to peer-reviewed journals by selecting the box Peer Reviewed journals. In  Informit Collection databases type in your search and select an article. Click on Complete Record to see Peer-Reviewed Article Indicator. To identify peer-reviewed journals in  Informit Plus Text databases go to Titles on the top menu bar. Browse the list of journal titles. A P  indicates a peer-reviewed journal.

Search the Ulrichsweb database. If the journal name has an icon like a little black and white striped referee shirt  , the journal is peer-reviewed.

Peer-reviewed journals usually indicate their peer-reviewed status on their website and provide information about their peer-review process. Search the internet to find a journal's home page.

Open Access Content

Victoria University Research Repository– Read research papers from VU academics.

Trove  searches across university and government repositories for theses; journal articles; book chapters; music recordings and pictures.

EDT - is the international Electronic Dissertation & Thesis repository search. 

Oaister - is a project of the world-wide, Open Archives Initiative movement. Its goal is to create a collection of freely available, full text, academic resources: 

Videos

Kanopy - Provides access to documentaries, feature films and training videos.

Social Work Online -'The content is structured around twelve of the most important topics in the social work curriculum, most of which are applicable worldwide: children & families, older adults, crisis & trauma, immigration, diversity, school & social work, substance abuse, mental health, health care'.

Counseling and Therapy in Video - Collection of videos for the study of counselling, social work, psychotherapy, psychology, and psychiatric counselling.