How to Find Journal Articles

Legal periodical indexes, unlike the full-text journal databases discussed elsewhere, are useful for identifying relevant law journal articles, but do not generally contain the full text of these articles. One reason why you may want to search periodical indexes in addition to full-text databases is that indexes often include journals not covered by the full-text databases. Also, you may obtain better search results with the periodical indexes as a result of being able to search the subject headings that are assigned to each article as well as the abstracts/summaries that are written for some of the articles. The law library subscribes to one major periodical index for law journals published in the United States and other English-speaking countries (Index to Legal Periodicals & Books) and to a periodical index for foreign journals (Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals). Both indexes are available on the USC Law Library’s Online Resources page.

The Index to Legal Periodicals (ILP) indexes scholarly legal periodicals. ILP really consists of two different databases: a current database that indexes articles from 1982 to the present (“Index to Legal Periodicals & Books”) as well as a retrospective database covering the time period 1908-1981 (“Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective”). While the full-text database does include select full-text articles and/or abstracts from 1994 to the present, many of the article records include only citation information and subject headings. Use the "Find it @USC" button to locate a full-text copy of the article.

Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP) provides online Boolean and field searching for citations to articles published since 1984 in journals that focus on international, comparative, or foreign law. Foreign law is defined here as the law of individual countries other than the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Inclusion in IFLP is based on type of journal rather than country of publication. Therefore, international and comparative law journals published in the United States or another English-speaking country are included in this database. IFLP is solely a periodical index and does not include any full-text material. Use the "Available on HeinOline" link, where available, to locate a full text copy of articles of interest.