LibGuides: MPA Capstone Research: Home

Database Search tips

Use keywords, not sentences or questions. Library databases are not as forgiving as Google. Searches must be more precise and use as few words as possible to convey your topic.
Break up your keywords/ideas into separate boxes when they are provided on the search interface
try synonyms, related terms, and narrower or broader terms
Put quotes around phrases, such as "public administration" and "succession planning"

These are some of the top databases for Public Administration Research:

Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
News, academic journals, and magazine coverage of all aspects of business- will include non-profit management, theory, and financial information.
Provides full text for 3,298 business periodicals including scholarly journals covering management, economics, finance, accounting, international business and much more. Periodical coverage ranges from Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, and American Banker to journals such as Harvard Business Review, Journal of Management,and Academy of Management Review. Full text coverage begins in 1965 for many journals and includes PDF images and embedded images for many of these journals. In addition, the database provides company information for over 200,000 companies from such sources as Dun Bradstreet, Thomas Register and Disclosure. Search Guide | Video Tutorial
Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Students on the Criminal Justice track may find this collection of international journals, books, reports, dissertations and unpublished papers on criminology and related disciplines useful.
Comprehensive coverage of international journals, books, reports, dissertations and unpublished papers on criminology and related disciplines; includes links to full text articles in 270 journals. Search Guide | Video Tutorial
Military & Government Collection This link opens in a new window
This collection includes academic journals, periodicals, and trade journals related to government and the military.
Designed to offer current news pertaining to all branches of the military and government, this database offers a thorough collection of periodicals, academic journals, and other content pertinent to the increasing needs of those sites. It provides cover-to-cover full text for nearly 300 journals and periodicals, indexing and abstracts for nearly 400 titles, full text country reports from CountryWatch, and 245 full text. Search Guide | Video Tutorial
PAIS International PAIS Archive & PAIS International This link opens in a new window
Includes citations for articles, government documents, conference proceedings and more. This is primarily an index, so will have limited full text, though full text may be available through other databases.
Covers 1972 to present with references to more than 625,800 journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference reports, publications of international agencies, microfiche, Internet material, and more. Publications from over 120 countries are included. In addition to English, some of the indexed materials are published in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and other languages. The PAIS Archive database comprises a retrospective conversion of the PAIS Annual Cumulated Bulletin, Volumes 1-62, published 1915-1976. PAIS Archive contains over 1.23 million records. Search Guide
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
This is a huge, multi-disciplinary database that includes content from several public administration, management, and criminal justice journals.
The largest aggregated full-text database with more than 8,400 full-text titles among the 11,500 titles covered. Over 160 subject areas are covered extensively including business and economics, health and medical, news and world affairs, technology, social sciences, sciences, etc. Search Guide | Video Tutorial
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
This is a huge, multi-disciplinary database that will include content for all tracks of the MPA program. Academic journals, newspapers, trade journals, and other content is included.
The world's largest scholarly, multi-discipline, full text database designed specifically for academic institutions. With a collection of 4,000 peer-reviewed, scholarly full text journals, this database offers critical information from many sources found in no other database. The database includes full-page images as well as color embedded images. Scholarly, full text resources are provided for nearly all academic areas of study: social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies. Search Guide | Video Tutorial

Think Tank Search (Harvard Kennedy School)
Think Tank Search searches the websites of institutions that generate public policy research, analysis, and activity. These sites are affiliated with universities, governments, advocacy groups, foundations, and non-governmental organizations.

Ely Library at Westfield State University

MPA Capstone Research: Home

Database Search tips

These are some of the top databases for Public Administration Research: