Collins Memorial Library: PHIL 350 : Metaethics & Moral Psychology: Articles

Search Tips

Use Advanced Search and limit features whenever possible. Subset limits, date limits, subject searches, etc., are all useful time savers. These tips can be used across different databases.

Start with a general search.
Avoid long phrases.
Use AND to find all the words (distinct concepts) on your topic.
Use OR to find any of the words (synonyms or related concepts) on your topic.
The symbol * is used as a right hand truncation character in most databases; it will find all forms of a word.
Use quotation marks '' '' to search for an entire phrase
Be flexible in your searching.

Philosophy Databases

Philosophers Index
Covers scholarly research in all major fields of philosophy. It contains research published since 1940 including journals from many countries with content representing a variety of languages.

PhilPapers
A comprehensive index and bibliography of philosophy research maintained by the community of philosophers.

Religion and Philosophy Collection
This database provides extensive coverage of such topics as world religions, major denominations, biblical studies, religious history, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of language, moral philosophy and the history of philosophy.

Interdisciplinary Research

If your research question has been approached from other disciplinary frameworks, you may wish to familiarize yourself with that scholarly literature, with the aim of showing how a philosophical approach can add to our understanding of the issues. Use the library's subject pages to explore more options.

Humanities Abstracts
Covers topics including art, classical studies, dance, film, journalism, philosophy, religion and much more. Content includes feature articles, interviews, obituaries and original works of fiction, drama, poetry and reviews.
Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984
Bibliographic information covering all aspects of the humanities and social sciences from as far back as 1907, includes book reviews.
JSTOR

An multidisciplinary journal archive. It includes archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. Includes the Artstor image collections.
Project MUSE
Interdisciplinary database includes books and articles from scholarly publishers with focus on humanities and social science.

Google Scholar Cited Reference Search

Google Scholar can help you find articles which have cited an article that you have found. Frequent citation is often (but not always!) a marker for a particularly influential scholarly work.

Using citations to search for scholarly literature can help you think more broadly about your research topic within the larger discipline, and help you answer the following questions:

Who/what are the big names and articles in this area?
Who is this research in conversation with?

Step 1: When looking at search results, check for the 'Cited by X' link underneath each result. That will tell you how many subsequent articles (that Google Scholar is aware of) have cited this particular article or book.

Step 2: Click that link, and you will be taken to a new set of results, all of which have cited the original article, which will still be listed at the top of the page.

Tipasa: Interlibrary Loan

If your article is not available at Collins Library, you've got another option for getting it. Use Tipasa, our interlibrary loan service.

Tipasa is linked to your library account so you'll need to log in to use it.

Once you are logged in, either go directly to Tipasa and manually enter the information, or, if you're using a database, look for a shortcut link to automatically fill out the form:

Allow at least a week for the article to come. If your article is delivered in electronic format, you'll receive an email with a link to follow as soon as it's arrived.