Subject Guides: JLC 309: Justice and Public Policy (Kaplan): Scholarly Journals / Political Documents

Policy Resources

Policy File Index
Provides access to publications and reports from over 386 think tanks, research organizations, and policy groups. For this course, be sure to explore and discus the organization's overall political leanings and motivations when citing their work. 1990 - present. Updated weekly.

In support of the University's budget mitigation efforts, AU Library had to make cuts to our collection and cancel some resources. Unfortunately, access to Policy File Index ended June 30, 2025.
We recommend this resource as an alternative:
Policy Commons
For more information about the library’s cancellation process, please see the Scholarly Resource Cancellations Subject Guide.
CRS Reports (Congressional Research Service)
Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a non-partisan research organization serving members of the House and Senate. Based out of the Library of Congress, their reports provide policy and legal analysis to congressional committees.

CRS Reports (via ProQuest Congressional)
Same CRS content, different interface. Change search preferences to remove or add additional Congressional documents such as committee hearings and reports to search results.

CQ Researcher
Limited to 5 consecutive users. This resource explores "hot" issues in the news each week. Topics include health, social trents, criminal justice, and more. An introcductory overview is provided for each topic and includes pro-con debates, background and chronology, assessment of the current situation, and bibliographies of key resources. 1991 - present

Criminal Justice Abstracts
Criminal Justice Abstracts contains comprehensive coverage of international journals, books, reports, dissertations and unpublished papers on criminology and related disciplines.
Sociological Abstracts
Provides abstracts and indexes for the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,800+ serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. 1952 - present
NCJRS Virtual Library
The NCJRS Abstracts database is produced by the U.S. Department of Justice and contains summaries of over 189,000 U.S. and international publications on research, policy, and practice related to criminal and juvenile justice and drug control. The publications covered are from 1970 to present and include federal, state, and local government reports, books, research reports, journal articles, audiovisual presentations, and unpublished research.
Social Science Database (ProQuest)
Abstracts and some full text of journals and magazines in anthropology, sociology, psychology, business management, public administration, political science, criminology, and economics.

Academic Search Premier
This scholarly database contains over 3,600 peer-reviewed publications in full-text on every subject.
JSTOR
Full-text of back issues of core journals in the humanities, social sciences and sciences, plus a collection of more than two million digital art images for teaching and research.
American University is participating in JSTORs interactive research tool beta testing. View our FAQ for details.
ProQuest Central
Multi-subject reference source covering general and academic periodicals; full-text is available for many articles.