Middle Eastern Studies

Definitions

Understanding a few key definitions will help you find and evaluate scholarly journal articles.

journal - a publication which releases collections of research articles or other academic writing on a regular basis. Typically the volume indicates how many years that journal has been published, while the issue indicates how many times the journal was published in a given year.

periodical - a type of publication that is published on a regular basis.

For example, a newspaper that is published weekly, a magazine that is published monthly, or a scholarly journal that is published four times a year.

peer-reviewed - applies to an article evaluated by other experts in the author's field who have determined that it is of sufficiently high quality to be published.

full-text - means that you can read the complete contents of the article.

index - means that you can only read citation information for the article and sometimes an abstract.

If the library doesn't have the article, you can always request it through Interlibrary Loan.

Search for Library Journal Articles

There are three main ways to find scholarly journal articles through the library:

Discovery Search
Search for individual journals or articles.
Tip: To narrow your results to scholarly articles, check the "Scholarly Peer Reviewed Articles" box under the "Limit To" header.

eJournals Search
This allows you to search for full journals rather than individual articles. You can browse volumes of a particular journal or search within that journal.

"Browse Subjects" in the upper right corner lets you view all ejournals on a particular subject (ex. Indo-Iranian philology and literature).

Journal databases
These are collections that allow you to search the contents of many journals at once.

Journal Databases - Middle Eastern Studies

Library Databases

Historical Abstracts Full Text This link opens in a new window
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Journal articles, many in full text, and citations to books and dissertations on world history from 1450, published 1954-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies This link opens in a new window
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An index to articles and other scholarly literature on the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa, 1900-present. Since it is a library database, it will check to see if you access an article elsewhere in the library.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Open Access Collections

Access to Mideast and Islamic Resources (AMIR)
Blog documenting open access resources in Middle Eastern studies including journals.
Database of Arabic Literature (DAL)
An index consisting of bibliographic records of books, articles, chapters of books and reviews written in English since the movement of translation and commentary of Arabic literary texts first began in the West.
Directory of Free Arab Journals (DFAJ)
A directory of full-text, open access scientific journals published in the Arab countries. DFAJ currently includes 250+ journals from 172 publishers in 17 Arab countries in Arabic, English, and French.

Journal Databases - Political Science

PAIS International This link opens in a new window
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Full-text journals, government documents, and reports in political science, public and social policy, and international relations. 1915-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
ProQuest Political Science This link opens in a new window
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Full-text political science scholarly journals, dissertations and theses, newspapers, magazines, trade journals, reports, and more.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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Index of political science journals from 50+ countries. 1975-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Journal Databases - Multidisciplinary

Check the A-Z Databases page for a complete list of library databases. Depending on your topic, you may find it more useful to explore discipline-specific databases, which can be found using the "Subject" dropdown.

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
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Full-text scholarly journals from all academic disciplines. 1975-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index This link opens in a new window
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Index of scholarly journals in the arts and humanities. 1975-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new window
Full-text open access scholarly journals. Coverage varies but is mostly recent.
Content is freely available for use by all.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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Full-text scholarly journals from a range of disciplines. Coverage from the earliest issue of each journal to a few years before present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Project Muse This link opens in a new window
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Full-text scholarly journals and books in the humanities and social sciences published by university presses. 1996-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Social Sciences Citation Index This link opens in a new window
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Index of scholarly journals in the social sciences. 1900-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
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Index of peer-reviewed journals from a range of disciplines..Arts and Humanities covers 1975-present; Social Sciences 1900-present; and Science 1900-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.