These databases provide articles that have been reviewed by scholars in the relevant field prior to publication. This is a form of quality control that, while not perfect, provides excellent quality control in scholarly discourse.
Please note: Some of these databases cover popular sources (books, book reviews, opinion pieces, etc.) as well as scholarly journals. When you search, you can limit your results to peer-reviewed articles.
Academic Search Premier contains indexing, abstracts and full-text articles for scholarly publications, most of them peer-reviewed. The subjects covered include topics in the social sciences, humanities, general science, education and most areas of academic study.
Environment Complete is a comprehensive database focused on all aspects of environmental science including conservation, biodiversity, climate, pollution, agriculture and aquaculture, environmental law and policy, urban planning, environmental engineering, and more.
GreenFILE searches journal articles, government documents, and ebooks relating to human impact on the environment. It covers interdisciplinary topics such as environmental policy, environmental engineering, pollution, conservation, and other areas in which human activities and nature coincide. GreenFILE also contains a cited references feature that allows the user to see what material the author has cited in their publication, and what later publications cite it.
This database provides full text access to the back issues of core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Book reviews are included as well as journal articles. Abstracts are available for some of the articles.
This database is a core general science resource, covering all aspects of scientific literature. It also has a number of tools that make it a unique resource for finding scholarly literature. Item records come with links both to the works cited by the paper in question and the future works that cite that paper. Web of Science also allows the user to set up email alerts for specific authors or topics, provides researcher profiles, and to use associated journal metrics provided by the vendor.
For books related to cycling, urban design, and sustainability, use BU Libraries Search, a discovery tool that connects you to the BU Libraries resources.
Below are some books that you may find particularly useful for this course.