Welcome to the research guide for Ethics 2050! On this page you will find advice and links for research resources for this course, as well as information about citing sources in Chicago Style.
Since papers in ethics typically incorporate both an ethical theory (utilitarianism, deontology, Catholic Social Thought, etc.) and a specific problem or controversy, you may need to consult sources both from the philosophical literature and from other disciplines.
Ethical Theories and Ethics Research
Philosopher's Index. The Philosopher’s Index contains references to thousands of articles from philosophy journals, including ethics journals. Searching for applied topics in this database can be an efficient way to find discussions of those topics that are explicitly tied to ethical theories.
Ethics Encyclopedias. These reference resources contain articles on many applied ethics topics. Use them to gain a broad understanding of your topic, and consult the bibliography or “further reading” section for additional sources.
-International Encyclopedia of Ethics
-Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics
-Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics
Falvey's Catalog. Falvey Library collects books on many ethics topics. Single-author and multi-author works focused on your topic can be a great place to start. Books tend to be less specialized than journal articles, and more useful for research papers.
Specific Topics / Applied Ethics Areas
For business topics:
ABI/INFORM. This database indexes publications on business and economics, including scholarly articles and reports about specific countries and industries.
For medical topics:
PubMed. This is the most authoritative database for biomedical research, developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
For social / political topics:
Since this area is so multi-disciplinary, the best approach is to use a generalist database, such as JSTOR. You can also use Summon, the database built into the library’s website. In either case, pay attention to the field the articles are published in—e.g., political science, sociology, criminology, etc. Search results can be limited to specific disciplines.
For cultural topics:
If your project focuses on cultural products like artworks, movies or tv shows, try Art Full Text or the Film & Television Literature Index for scholarly articles and reviews.
For environmental science topics:
Scholarly research on environmental issues can be found in large science databases like Scopus and Web of Science, as well as in more focused databases such as AGRICOLA (materials indexed by the National Agricultural Library) and GeoRef (resources in the geosciences).
Citing Sources
Chicago Manual of Style. Falvey Library provides access to the complete text of the Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition) online. For a brief overview of formatting for in-text citations and items in the reference list, consult the Quick Guide. Answers to many other questions (e.g., how to cite YouTube videos, Vatican documents, class lectures, etc.) can be found in Chapters 14 and 15, or by searching the Manual for keywords.