LEO: Languages: Journal Articles

Finding Academic Articles

For some assignments, you may be asked to use journal articles or other peer-reviewed material. These articles are written by scholars, and each is reviewed by other scholars before it is published to ensure it meets academic standards for the field. Many journals are published online, and most of Nash Library's journal collections are online only. You may find articles by browsing through specific journal titles or by searching through many journals at once using a database.

If you are connected to the internet on-campus, you are already logged in to all of Nash Library's online databases and journals. If you are off-campus, you will have to log in using your USAO credentials.

Databases for Articles on Languages and Language Education

Databases allow you to search within a vast number of publications to find journal articles and other sources, including books, book chapters, conference proceedings, and dissertations. Because these databases are only accessible via subscription, you will find articles and other materials that you could not find using a simple Google search. To see a list of all databases, click on Databases in the light green ribbon at the top of the screen.

Academic Search Complete
A multi-disciplinary database covering many areas of academic study, with more than 7,000 full-text periodicals, including nearly 6,000 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 11,000 journals and a total of more than 11,600 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
Communication and Mass Media Complete
Offers cover-to-cover ("core") indexing and abstracts for more than 550 journals, and selected ("priority") coverage of nearly 200 more, for a combined coverage of 737 titles. Furthermore, this database includes full text for over 440 journals. Many major journals have indexing, abstracts, PDFs and searchable cited references from their first issues to the present (dating as far back as 1915).
Education Resource Information Center (ERIC)-- U. S. Government site
Provides access to education literature and resources. It include fewer full-text documents than the EBSCO version.
Education Source
Contains scholarly research and information relating to all areas of education. It covers all levels of education from early childhood to higher education, and educational specialties, like multilingual education, health education, testing, curriculum instruction, administration, policy, funding, and related social issues. It has abstracts for thousands of journals and includes full text for more than 1,700 journals, 550 books and monographs, and numerous education-related conference papers.
JSTOR
Offers archives of leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. The entire corpus is full-text searchable, offers search term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references.
Please note that USAO only subscribes to JSTOR I, II, III, and VII.
MLA International Bibliography
Produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), this bibliography contains over 2.2 million citations from more than 4,400 journals & series, and 1,000 book publishers. Coverage is international and includes almost 60 titles from J-STOR's language and literature collection as well as links to full text. Subjects consist of literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory & criticism, dramatic arts, as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing.

Finding Academic Articles in Foreign Languages

The best way to find non-English articles is to use LEO Search. In addition to our subscription databases, it also searches through many free foreign-language databases. Some articles include links to the full text, while others are only basic citations; you will need to request those through interlibrary loan (or do a web search for the article title to see if perhaps the authors have archived a copy through their institution). You can use the Limit by Language option to select the language you want.

Academic Journals on Language and Language Education

Because the liberal arts are interdisciplinary, there are many different journals on different subjects that could contain articles relevant to your research topic. This is a short list of journals that focus on languages and learning languages.

To find more journals on a subject, click Journals at the top of this page; then, in the "Browse by Discipline" box, click the subject you want to study.

Interlibrary Loan

Databases include records for thousands of articles, including ones to which Nash Library does not have access. However, you can get these articles through interlibrary loan.

When you find an article you like, look for an interlibrary loan link. It will take you to the Nash Library Interlibrary Loan Form, which you can then fill out and submit. Nash Library will contact a library which has access to the journal, and that library will send Nash a copy.