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Course & Subject Guides

Research and Writing in Economics - Pittsburgh Campus

This guide is designed to assist students in the economics department and others writing research papers with an economic or socio-economic focus.

Finding Articles

What is scholarly information?

Scholarly information is based on in-depth research and is considered to be higher quality and more reliable information for your paper. Scholarly journal articles are normally either peer reviewed or invited by the editor of the journal. Books, book chapters, and conference proceedings can also be sources of scholarly information.

Reference articles are great places to find background information on any topic. Scholarly reference works are useful for the following:

  • An overview of a topic
  • Topic ideas for a paper topic or narrowing your topic
  • Finding keywords for searches 
  • Bibliographies for further research

Online Reference Collections

Reference  Books

Dictionaries

Databases are online collections of high quality scholarly research information that can be searched by topic or keyword.  Databases are great sources for full text of articles, photographs, newspapers, and more. Use the featured databases below for information on economics topics.

Economics Databases

These databases contain in-depth articles and information on this subject.

Socio-economic and Political Databases

These multidisciplinary databases contain in-depth articles and information on economic conditions and global issues.

Newspaper Databases

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is often helpful for finding scholarly articles on your topic. It includes links to articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, pre print repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.  Many articles provide links to other articles that have cited the first article. Some articles may contain statistical content.

Features of Google Scholar

  • Search diverse sources from one convenient place
  • Find articles, theses, books, abstracts or court opinions
  • Locate the complete document through your library or on the web
  • Learn about key scholarly literature in any area of research
Google Scholar Search