Guides: Latin American Studies: Databases and Journals in the Social Sciences

Latin American Studies Databases

Hispanic American Periodicals Index
Subjects covered include anthropology, archaeology, anthropology, banking and finance, business, commerce, drama, drug trade, economic development, environmental issues, ethnography, folklore, geography, history, indigenous affairs, literature, philosophy, politics, religion, social movements, and women's rights. HAPI cites articles published in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

!Informe! (Revistas en Espanol)
Full text and, in many cases, with illustrations, of over 160 Spanish-language and U.S. Hispanic magazines, newspapers and journals.
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There are a thesaurus and interface designed for Spanish-speaking users. !Informe! thinks through every query in Spanish. !Informe! also features title annotations in both English and Spanish. The publications come from the United States, Mexico, Spain, Argentina, and other nations of Spanish America. Coverage for most publications begins in the mid or late 1990s.
CLASE - Citas Latinoamericanas en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades
CLASE is a social sciences and humanities database created in 1975 at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). It contains more than 200,000 citations to articles, essays, book reviews, statistics and other documents published in over 1,300 Latin American and Caribbean periodicals.
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"CLASE es una base de datos bibliografica creada en 1975 en la Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). La base de datos se actualiza diariamente y mas de 10,000 registros son agregados cada ano. Ofrece mas de 200,000 registros bibliograficos de articulos, ensayos, resenas de libro, revisiones bibliograficas, notas breves, editoriales, biografias, entrevistas, estadisticas y otros documentos publicados en mas de 1,300 revistas de America Latina y el Caribe, especializadas en ciencias sociales y humanidades."
Redalyc - Red de Revistas Cientificas de America Latina y El Caribe, Espana y Portugal
Redalyc is a fulltext journal project in the social sciences created by members of the Facultad de Ciencias Politicas y Administracion Publica de la Universidad Autonoma de Estado de Mexico.
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The objective is to make more widely available the scientific production of Latin America and Iberia. For inclusion a journal must meet at least 75% of 33 different criteria. As of March 2005 Redalyc contained nearly 14,000 articles from 157 journals. Abstracts usually appear in English and either Spanish or Portuguese, sometimes both and sometimes in another language (e.g., French).

SciELO
SciELO is an electronic library providing fulltext articles, most in English, Spanish, or Portuguese, from a collection of scientific journals. SciELO includes the collections: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Public Health, Social Sciences, Spain, and Venezuela.

Best Bet General Social Sciences Databases

AnthroSource
Indexes journals, newsletters, bulletins and monographs of the American Anthropological Association (AAA).
Sociological Abstracts + Social Services Abstracts
Combined file of Sociological Abstracts + Social Services Abstracts. Covers sociology, case work, demographics, policy studies, political science, family studies, feminist studies, social work, human services, social welfare, social policy, and community development.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
67% of the more than 1500 monitored journals are published outside the United States, and there are nearly 500,000 records beginning in 1975. Some of the records have fulltext links and coverage includes all aspects of political science, as well as international relations and comparative politics.
PAIS Index
Bibliographic citations (1915-) with indexing on contemporary public affairs and policy issues worldwide related to a wide range of topics: agriculture, banking, finance, business, demographics, education, health, environment, planning, public administration, law and legislation, and international relations. Materials indexed include journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference reports, publications of international agencies, microfiche, and Internet material. Newspapers and newsletters are not indexed.
JSTOR
JSTOR specializes in making available the back issues of journals in a wide variety of humanities and social science disciplines. Issues are available both as images and as text, making searching possible both within each title and across the whole database.

Penn's subscription currently includes all the available collections:
- the Arts & Sciences Collection I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII and the Complement
- the Business II & III Collection
- the Biological Sciences Collection
- the Health & General Science Collection
- the Language and Literature Collection
- the Music Collection
- the 19th Century British Pamphlets
Access to journals from JSTOR is restricted to current Penn faculty, staff and students.

Printing from the JSTOR database requires downloading a helper application called JPrint.

Latin American Studies Journals

These are just a few examples of the journals in Latin American Studies available via Penn Libraries:

Articles not available via Penn Libraries

If you don't see a way to access an article for free through Penn Libraries, use the "Request Article" link on the left-hand side of the Resource Sharing guide.