This guide will help you find published scholarship (essays, books, chapters, journal articles, etc.) and primary sources on a topic.
Remember to evaluate the accuracy of your sources, and think critically about their content and arguments.
For remote login to the Library's electronic resources, see our instructions for Off-Campus Access.
Remember to consult with your instructor in the Philosophy Department about your project!
Subject encyclopedias and other reference guides can provide good background information on a topic. Many reference books are in printed format, while others are available in electronic resource collections such as:
Gale eBooks (formerly Gale Virtual Reference Library)
The series provides reliable information on authors and their works in an easy-to-understand, engaging format while placing writers in the larger perspective of literary history.
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy by 
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2nd. ed., 10 vols.)
Encyclopedia of Religion
Encyclopedia of Time: Science, Philosophy, Theology & Culture (3 vols.) by 
New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (6 vols.) by 
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy by 
The Oxford Companion to the Mind by 
This database is an essential resource for religious and theological studies, providing bibliographic records covering topics such as biblical studies, world religions, church history, and religion in social issues.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. Please sign to QC Library when prompted to browse articles within the Queens College Library collections.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
Humanities Source is a valuable full-text database covering literary, scholarly, and creative thought.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
The resource provides researchers with unbounding literary resources to support their literary responses, literary analysis, and thesis statements through a diversity of scholars and critics that ensure all views and interpretations are represented.
Digital collection of more than 520 volumes of Greek and Latin texts alongside English translations.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
MagillOnLiterature Plus is the definitive source for editorially reviewed critical analyses, character studies, author biographies, and plot summaries of the most studied literary works.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
MLA International Bibliography Produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), the electronic version of the bibliography dates back to the 1920s and contains millions of citations from journals and series, as well as book publishers.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
This current and comprehensive bibliographic database covers scholarly research in all major fields of philosophy.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
Collection of scholarly journals and e-books, primarily in the humanities and social sciences.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch
Collection of journals and e-books, with a strong emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering, medicine) content.
Catalogue Link: OneSearch.
What is a scholarly journal article?
A scholarly journal article is written by a scholar or an expert, and provides a detailed analysis of a topic. It is written in the specialized language of a scholarly discipline (such as Philosophy). It documents the resources the writer used by providing bibliographic citations such as footnotes, endnotes, and bibliography so a reader can check or repeat the research the scholar has completed.
A scholarly journal is edited by scholars, and any article published in the journal has usually been approved by the author's peers or by referees (other scholars expert in the subject who serve as editors or readers and critique the article before it is accepted for publication). This is why most scholarly journals are referred to as a Peer-Reviewed or Refereed journals. Here is a comparison between popular and scholarly periodicals. There are usually several databases that can be used to search for journal articles on a topic.
