Research Guides: International relations & security: Essentials: start here

Always start here to locate PSCI/IS research literature

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts from ProQuest
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts indexes citations and abstracts from journal articles, books, essays, book reviews, working papers, technical reports, theses, and dissertations in the social sciences related to politics. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1975-present.

The database is building on the merged backfiles of Political Science Abstracts, published by IFI / Plenum, 1975-2000, and ABC POL SCI, published by ABC-CLIO, 1984-2000. Over 1,700+ titles are being monitored for coverage; of these, 67% are published outside the United States.

The references cited in the bibliography of the source article have been included for citations to core journals in political science, added to the database since 2001, and for all journals added since 2004. Each individual reference may also have links to an abstract and/or to other papers that cite that reference; these references are linked both within Worldwide Political Science Abstracts and across other social science databases from ProQuest. All records added since 2000 are indexed using a thesaurus of over 3,000 terms.

Major areas of coverage include:

Comparative politics
Developing nations
Disarmament
Economic policy
Electoral systems
Environmental policy
Government/Political systems
History and theory of political science
International relations/trade
Labor relations
Military policy
Methodology and research technology
Political behavior
Political economy
Political psychology
Politics and law
Politics and communication
Politics and religion
Politics and society
Public administration
Security and defense
Welfare systems

Security resources

Security Studies from JSTOR
Security Studies is a topical collection that “looks at security studies through a broad lens, encompassing research on international security and peace and conflict studies from all corners of the globe “ It includes content drawn from journals and ebooks already in JSTOR and adds research reports and periodicals added specifically for this collection. Browseable by topic and searchable (including image searching).
Bookmark this link. JSTOR's topical collections like this can be difficult to find in the regular JSTOR interface.

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For more about this collection, including basic JSTOR tips and tricks, see JSTOR’s Security Studies libguide.
Homeland Security Digital Library
HSDL is a collection of documents related to homeland security policy, strategy, and disaster management from a wide variety of sources. These include documents from federal, state, tribal, and local government agencies, professional organizations, think tanks, academic institutions, and international governing bodies. 1941-present. HSDL is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Preparedness Directorate, FEMA, and the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Create an individual account with your VT email address if you wish to access additional HSDL researcher content. See also
- Essays in HSDL's On the Homefront blog and
- Greta's Gouge weekly current-awareness posting of papers and articles pertaining to conflict, national security, and defense; arranged by source. Compiled by Greta Marlatt, HSDL content manager at US Naval Postgraduate School
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Make be offline in whole or part during Trump Administration content review of the CHDS.us website. Try Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (see, eg, its Jan 2, 2025 scrape).
Institute for National Strategic Studies
CSI Publications (Central Intelligence Agency)
CIA Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1861-
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The organization of FRUS is generally chronological, but the dates of the volumes do not necessarily reflect the dates of documentary history. For example, the volumes for 1900-1918 do not include the records dealing with World War I or the Russian Revolution. Each volume has a subject and author index.

Besides providing the text of important foreign policy documents, FRUS also includes source citations (printed either with the document or as footnotes) that indicate the location of the original documents. In this way, FRUS serves as a guide to the location of additional documents on the same and related subjects.
Military Legal Resources

Jane's Air & Space Module

Background: verviews and reference works in international relations

Oxford Research Encyclopedias : International Studies
This project is the latest collaboration between Oxford University Press and the International Studies Association. It brings newly commissioned articles together with existing and revised articles from the ISA's International Studies Encyclopedia (2017) to form a leading-edge, continuously updated digital resource.
Global Issues in Context from Gale
Global Issues in Context provides international viewpoints on a broad spectrum of global issues, topics, and current events. Featured are hundreds of continuously updated issue and country portals that bring together a variety of specially selected, highly relevant sources for analysis of social, political, military, economic, environmental, health, and cultural issues. Each of these gateway pages includes an overview, unique "perspectives" articles written by local experts, reference, periodical, primary source and statistical information.
Gale Ebooks

Sage Knowledge: Politics & International Relations
Reference ebooks from major publisher of research works and textbooks in social sciences. Expandable menu directs you to works in most major subfields of the discipline.

SAGE Research Methods Online
The Methods Map is an exciting and innovative visualization tool that can be used to discover relationships between methods, to discover new methods and to find content related to them. Underpinning the Methods Map is a new taxonomy of social science research methods, developed by SAGE, and containing over 1,400 unique terms.

The Methods Lists are lists of content within the product that our users have selected and want to share through this product. You can create your own lists, either for private use, or to share with others on the site.

The Little Green Books are our famous series, Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences. This entire series is available on SAGE Research Methods, with additional tools across the site to filter your search on just these titles.

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2d ed) by James D. Wright, ed.
ISBN: 978-0-08-097087-5

Publication Date: 2015

Country/Regional profiles in depth

EIU Viewpoint
A key resource for political economy and area studies/comparative politics, EIU Viewpoint integrates Economist Intelligence Unit Country Reports and other forecasts, analyses, news, and data at the global, regional, and country level for almost 200 countries. Some content updated daily. "Two-Year Forecasts" continue approach and format of the former Country Reports; "One-Click Reports" resemble the forecasts but conspicuously do not provide tabular data. Data are interactive and include some visualizations; tables can be exported to Excel. Coverage goes back to 2011, with coverage to 1996 planned. See also the definitive Country Reports archives:
- 1996-2021: EIU.com classic platform.
- 1952-1995: Economist Intelligence Unit Country Reports Archive from ProQuest provides digitized versions of original print reports.

Surveys of US National Intelligence Published Outputs (Webinars)

Archived 45-minute webcasts provide overviews for exploring publicly available information from US intelligence agencies. Presenter is Albert Chapman (Purdue University Library). Offered in 2018-19 as part of the US Government Publishing Office's "FDLP Academy" training sessions for librarians (but not geeky)

Enhancing Your Intelligence Agency Information Resource IQ, Pt. 1: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence. This webinar describes information resources produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). This agency is responsible for leading U.S. intelligence community integration to deliver the most insightful intelligence information for national security policymakers. Organizational components whose resources are covered include the National Intelligence Council (NIC), National Counterproliferation Center (NCPC), National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), and Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC). Individuals viewing this webinar will learn more about the multifaceted and publicly-accessible information resources produced by ODNI." Recorded May 02, 2018.
Enhancing your Intelligence Agency Information Resource IQ, PT. 2: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). "Viewers will gain an understanding of the CIA’s organizational structure, and learn to use the historical and contemporary information resources which are produced by the CIA." Recorded June 12, 2018.
Enhancing Your Intelligence Agency Information Resources IQ, Part 3 Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. "This webinar demonstrates the publicly-accessible information resources produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA). It contains information about both of these agencies historical backgrounds (including declassified Freedom of Information Act reports, and their ongoing missions including the NSA’s role in cybersecurity and signals intelligence." Recorded September 18, 2018.
Enhancing Your Intelligence Agency Information Resource IQ, PT. 4 National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence University, and National Reconnaissance Office. "Viewers should gain an enhanced understanding of the publicly-accessible information resources produced by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence University, and National Reconnaissance Office and how these agencies carry out their policymaking activities." Recorded November 06, 2018.
Enhancing Your Intelligence Agency Information Resources IQ, Part 5: Individual Armed Services Intelligence Organizations. "This webinar will introduce viewers to the publicly-accessible information resources provided by individual branches of the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy. Learn more about topics such as ballistic missiles, cybersecurity, international piracy, and other areas of relevance in military intelligence analysis." Recorded January 17, 2019.
Enhancing Your Intelligence Agency Information Resources IQ, Part 7: Department of Energy, Homeland Security, State Dept., Treasury Dept., and Boards and Commissions. "Learn about the contemporary and historic intelligence information resources produced by these agencies, boards, and commissions." Recorded March 26, 2019.