Databases

Covers social science and interdisciplinary research; includes nearly two million bibliographic references to journal articles, books, reviews and selected chapters dating back to 1951. It is unique in its broad coverage of international material and incorporates over 100 languages and countries. Over 2,700 journals are regularly indexed and some 7,000 books included each year. Abstracts are provided for half of all current journal articles and full text availability is continually increasing.

Provides citation data that helps evaluate and compare more than 20,000 scholarly journals in the areas of arts, business, humanities, science, technology, and social sciences. Journals can be retrieved by title, keyword(s), category (subject area), publisher, or country and sorted by several criteria such as total citations and impact factor. 

JSTOR provides access to a digital archive of journals in the areas of Arts, Business, Economics, and Sciences. JSTOR includes the entire runs of these journals, from the very first issue to the volumes published a few years ago. With a small number of exceptions - the "Current Scholarship" titles - JSTOR is a backfile collection and excludes the most recent issues (as part of the terms of the agreement with the journal publishers).

The Libris database provides word, title, author and subject access to material published in a number of Canadian periodicals of historical significance, including Maclean's Magazine, The Financial Post, The Monetary Times of Canada, Massey's Magazine, The Canadian Bookman, The Canadian Magazine, Saturday Night and The University Magazine.

NOTE: September 22, 2025: LinkedIn Learning subscription ending 
April 30, 2025: LinkedIn Learning access for McMaster alumni ending.
An online training database providing access to thousands of high-quality instructional videos on a broad range of topics in the areas of business, education, design, photography, programming, animation, video, audio and music. 

Features streaming videos of films, clips and trailers from the National Film Board (NFB) collection, including NFB world-renowned documentaries, films that chronicle key moments in the lives of Canadians and works that take a stand on issues of global importance: the environment, human rights, international conflict and more. It also contains acclaimed Canadian dramatic features, documentaries, animated films, and experimental works.

A Canadian labour relations database with a search and retrieval component for locating collective agreements.

Provides access to thousands of sources covering a wide range of subject areas. Includes international news, legislation, company profiles, industry reports, and more. 

O’Reilly for Higher Education includes technology and business content from more than 250 publishers, along with videos, case studies, learning paths and self-assessments. The database provides more than 40,000 e-books, including the familiar O'Reilly titles with woodcut animal covers, plus 30,000 hours of video, learning paths, case studies, interactive tutorials, audio books, and videos from O’Reilly’s global conferences. Individual titles are also listed in McMaster's library catalogue (included in Omni).

Topics range from programming to IT networking to project management to graphic design to business strategy. The content includes code snippets, certification preparation materials, practice exercises, training videos, and much more.  Formerly known as Safari Tech E-books.

The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) online library of books, reports, working papers, periodicals and statistical data covering a wide range of subjects including agriculture & food, development, economics, education, employment, energy, environment, finance & investment, governance, industry & services,  social issues, migration & health, taxation and transport.  Search by keyword(s) or browse by theme or by country name.

The OECD iLibrary provides online access to all books published by the OECD, including those of the International Energy Agency, the Nuclear Energy Agency, and the European Conference of Ministers of Transport. Currently, between 150 and 200 books are published each year. The subscription includes access to publications going back to 1998.

OECD (including NEA and IEA) publishes fourteen journals and newsletters, and ten statistical periodicals. Each is available in printed form and online.

The OECD iLibrary is the full-text online publications portal of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. McMaster University Libraries subscribe to all three components of the iLibrary - Books, Periodicals and Statistics. Contains international publications and statistics on a wide variety of subjects including agriculture, business, development, economics, education, employment, finance, investment, migration, science, technology, telecommunications and trade. The statistical databases allow you to build your own tables and have them exported to Excel, Beyond 20/20 and other formats.

Indexes over 4 million graduate-level electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) freely available from over 1,100 institutions worldwide.

Provides scholarly review articles summarizing current thinking and research in a range of subjects across the humanaities, social sciences, and sciences.  Each handbook offers in-depth introductions to topics and a critical survey of the current state of scholarship.  McMaster's access has expanded to include all 1200 Handbooks.

Covers issues in the public debate through selective coverage of a wide variety of international sources including journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference papers, web content, and more. 

Major online periodical archive that makes the backfiles of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences available electronically. PAO contains over 700 journals spanning more than two centuries of content, 37 key subject areas, and multiple languages. McMaster's subscription includes PAO collections 1-10.

Produced by Coherent Digital, Policy Commons is the world’s largest database for public policy, with more than 3.2 million reports, working papers, policy briefs, data sources, and media drawn from a directory of more than 24,000 IGOs, NGOs, think tanks, and research centers. It includes over a million pages of premium content from leading publishers and restored from organizations that have disappeared.

The Policy Commons interface offers fulltext searching in addition to 3,400 topics tags and filters for document type, organization name and type, publication language, country of publication, and publication date. It also provides a searchable database of more than 16,000 policy organizations worldwide.

Provides simultaneous access to the databases PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service) Index, Policy File Index, Political Science Database and Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, covering the international literature in political science and public administration/policy, along with related fields. Together, they provide abstracts, indexing and full text coverage of journal articles, country reports, dissertations, think-tank reports, working papers, government documents and more, including full-text from many leading political science and international relations journals.

Cross-search over 50 indexing, abstracting, and full-text databases in a range of subjects.

Indexes over 4 million doctoral dissertations and master's theses completed at colleges and universities worldwide. 

Contains thousands of full-text e-books across a variety of disciplines. To display titles accessible to McMaster users, use the "Book Status" filter and select "Owned and subscribed to by my library."  

Individual titles are also listed in McMaster's library catalogue and in the standard ProQuest databases platform.

Provides full-text access and/or indexing to thousands of business sources, including scholarly journals, magazines, trade publications, newspapers, books, dissertations, reports (e.g., company, country, industry), videos and more. Includes a mix of practical and theoretical content that covers all areas of business including accounting, e-commerce, entrepreneurship, finance, human resources, information systems, international business, management, marketing and operations research.

Provides citations and abstracts to journal articles in the professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, social work, education, business, pharmacology, physiology, law, linguistics. Covers over 1,800 international professional journals, as well as books, book chapters, reports, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations. Nearly all records contain non-evaluative summaries. Produced by the American Psychological Association. Beginning in 2001, many citations include references, their abstracts, and links to cited references.

Contains information on the full range of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods for the social and behavioral sciences, as well as many methods commonly used in the hard sciences, pulled from over 750 handbooks, encyclopedias, and journal articles. Supports researchers in every step of a research project, from writing a research question, choosing a method, gathering and analyzing data, to writing up and publishing the findings.

Learn about research methods and research design through stories from researchers in the field and their critique of their own research articles.

Learn to master quantitative and qualitative data analysis with step-by-step guides and sample data.

Read bite-sized introductions to hundreds of research concepts and methods written by global experts.

Contains over 50 million articles from over 23,000 full text journals covering many disciplines.

Provides online access to over 4,000 journals and 30,000 books published by Elsevier. Strong collections in the social sciences, pure and applied sciences, engineering, and medicine.  This service allows you to browse or search the journals and access full text articles (PDF & HTML).  McMaster has access to many, but not all titles at this site.