Articles - Criminology - Research Guide - Guides at Penn Libraries

Subject Databases for Criminology

Unlike general databases, these databases focus on a particular subject area. They have subject terms (listed in the thesaurus or index) that are tailored to that subject.

Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text
Abstracts of the scholarly literature and applied literature on criminology and related disciplines, with extensive fulltext. Reflects materials received at the Criminal Justice/National Council on Crime and Delinquency Library, Rutgers University Library, Newark, New Jersey.

KrimDok
"Dokumentation der deutschsprachigen kriminologischen Literatur" ... but very good for the international criminological literature too. A bibliographic database that covers books and articles on criminology and related disciplines published in German and in other languages, based upon the holdings of the Institut für Kriminologie and Universitätsbibliothek, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. Subject keywords are in German, and recent records include English subject keywords.
NCJRS
The National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts Database includes abstracts of over 140,000 research reports, journal articles, and government documents relating to crime, law enforcement, and the justice system.
Gray Literature DB / Don M. Gottfredson Library of Criminal Justice, Rutgers-Newark
Identifies gray literature (technical reports, working papers, government and agency reports, and conference proceedings) on all aspects of criminal justice. Started in 2010, includes citations back to late 1980s.
CrimDoc / Criminology Information Service & Library, University of Toronto
DEFUNCT? Index to "grey literature" from the field of Criminology, including institute, association, and government publications, as well as unpublished papers, working papers, research reports, etc.

Sociological Abstracts
From across the field of sociology, useful subject terms include "crime rates," "recidivism," "victim offender relations," and "family violence."
HeinOnline
Fulltext legal research database organized into collections. In addition to core collections such as Law Journal Library, U.S. Supreme Court Library, U.S. Federal Legislative History Library, and Subject Compilations of State Laws, special-focus collections include : Criminal Justice & Criminology, Gun Regulation and Legislation in America, History of Capital Punishment, and World Trials Library.
HINT! For law review articles, it's easier to search Index to Legal Periodicals (Current & Retrospective) and follow that database's PennText links than to plow into HeinOnline's fulltext.

Index to Legal Periodicals (Current & Retrospective). 1908- .
An excellent tool for tackling the enormous law review, legal yearbook, bar association, and government legal publications literature from the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. For foreign legal research, consider using Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (1985- ).

APA PsycInfo
The American Psychological Association's comprehensive indexing and abstracting service for the professional and scholarly literature in psychology and related fields.

Violence & Abuse Abstracts
A small, focused bibliographic database on violence and abuse, including family violence, sexual assault, emotional abuse, and other areas of key relevance.
PTSDPubs (formerly PILOTS : Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress)
A bibliographic database produced by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD. The database provides citations and abstracts to the worldwide literature on PTSD and other psychological effects of trauma.

General databases

These general databases that search across many fields can be an excellent starting point.

International Bibliography of the Social Scienes
Covers worldwide Western-language scholarly literature in anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology. Formerly sponsored by Unesco and produced by the London School of Economics, now maintained by ProQuest.

Google Scholar
Access Google Scholar through Penn Library to get Penn Text links to full-text.
EBSCO MegaFILE
General, multidisciplinary periodical database, covering all scholarly disciplines, with many general and popular magazines, and news sources. Includes bibliographic citations with indexing and abstracts for more than 16,000 periodicals.
Web of Science
Indexes journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Allows for cited reference searching.
Scopus
Allows searching of citations backward and forward.
Proquest Dissertations and Theses Fulltext (formerly Dissertation Abstracts)
Abstract of doctoral dissertations since 1980 and full-text since 1997.

Journals

Many criminology journals are available online for browsing. For a full list, including print holdings, search Franklin by subject for criminology periodicals. Some influential journals are listed below, with links to online content.

Crime and Justice
1979-present.
Criminology
1963-present.
Trauma, Violence & Abuse
2000-present.
Journal of Quantitative Criminology
Online from 1997-present.

Criminology - Research Guide: Articles

Subject Databases for Criminology

General databases

Journals