For quick access to high quality information for your assignments, try the links on these pages.
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New in Sept 2024: Watch this short video about getting the best from our new Discovery service.
New in June 2024! UK political party manifestos for the July 2024 election, plus links to analysis of the pledges on climate, education and health
Reading Lists
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Got an assignment? Have you looked at the reading list to see lecturer recommendations? For most assignments, our Discovery Service will give you enough sources to work with. This short video shows you how to get the best from Discovery for Politics/IR.
Sometimes you may want to try specific databases or journals - perhaps your lecturer has recommended particular sources as a good way of finding articles. This section lists key sources for Politics and International Relations.
Citation databases can be very helpful for advanced research at Masters' level upwards as they help you move quickly from a known author or article to finding out which other articles list them in their bibliographies. This is especially useful when you have only found a small number of results in your initial searches.
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and conference proceedings. It also features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research.
Top tip: do a normal keyword search, then change Sort on: at the top right of your results from Date (newest) to Cited by (highest). This will show you which articles on a topic are cited most by other academic authors.
Short video on doing a basic search in Scopus
Watch this short video about advanced features of Scopus
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
You will find the Social Sciences Citation Index the most useful part of this - just below Timespan on the left of the search screen, click More settings so that you can de-select the rest.
Watch these training videos
Additional access instructions:
Referencing
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Guidance and support for referencing in APA 7, including advice about reference generators 
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Our referencing page helps you reference sources correctly with guidance for an extensive range of print and online sources.
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