Find articles

This guide provides an overview of searching for articles at Stanford.

Finding an article for a known citation

If you have the citation for an article you want, search for the title of the journal in SearchWorks. If the journal is available online, you’ll see this icon and text:


Follow the link to access Stanford’s online subscription.

If the journal is not online, the SearchWorks record (click on the title) will include location information for the print version of the journal (if we have it).

Searching for articles in databases

The libraries have subscriptions to about 1300 general and subject specific databases that you can use to search for articles, citations, book reviews, etc. Our databases are listed in SearchWorks. 

If you are not sure which database to use, try these selected databases.

You can also search a number of databases at one time using xSearch, which gives you up two hundred results from each databases. This is a good way to determine which database to use for more in-depth searching.

How to evaluate sources

Most article databases indicate whether sources are scholarly, or from non-scholarly sources. But evaluating sources, scholarly or not, is a complex task. Here is a short video that describes some variables you should take into account when evaluating sources. Even though a source may be be biased, or manipulative, or even false, it maybe a valuable source for your research, as long as you make clear its purpose. Important variables include:

  • Author
  • Audience
  • Review Process
  • Currency
  • Perspective

Connect to full text articles from databases

Most databases provide direct access to full-text articles. Some databases only provide citation information, such as author, journal, publication date, article abstract, etc. 

To connect to full text from a database citation, look for a button that says "find it @SU."  Click the button and follow the links to connect to the full text.

If you don't see the "find it @SU" button, search for the journal title in SearchWorks to see if it’s available through SUL in another format.

Finding articles with Google Scholar

If you are using Google Scholar for research, you can set it to link to Stanford’s full-text resources.  To use this feature, go to Google Scholar Settings and click on Library links in the left-hand column

Type Stanford in the "Show library access links" box and and click the search icon. Check the box next to “Stanford University – Find it @Stanford,” and click “Save.”

What to do if Stanford doesn’t have access to an article

If there’s an article you need, but Stanford doesn’t have access to it online or in print, you can make a request through interlibrary borrowing.