Sociology

In the database information system (DBIS), you will find an overview on available databases in Sociology (journal databases, factual databases, reference databases and full-text databases).

Important literature-databases for Sociology:

• Web of Science/Social Sciences Citation Index
  • This database includes, among other things, information about the citation numbers of an article and the journal impact factor of a journal.
• Sociological Abstracts
• SocioHub – Fachinformationsdienst Soziologie
• WISO
  • In addition to journals and e-books from the social sciences and economics, the database can also be used to find and read newspaper articles, e.g. from Handelsblatt, WirtschaftsWoche, DIE ZEIT and Der Spiegel.

Databases for current press releases:

• Factiva
• Nexis Uni

In the database and information system (DBIS), you can also find statistical databases. Statistical databases relevant to sociology are listed below (under 'research data').

E-journals are listed in the Electronic Journal Library (EZB).

You can use the Primo catalog to search for individual journals. When searching for journals in the catalog, we recommend using the advanced search and limiting the search to “journals” as material type.

The University Library in Mannheim has licensed an extensive offer of subject-specific e-books.

For Sociology, a selection of e-book packages of the publishers Nomos, Palgrave and Springer has been licensed.

Via the WISO database, you can also access further e-books.

All e-books available at the University Library in Mannheim can be found in the Primo catalog. In the Primo catalog, you can recognize e-books by “Online access” in the title information or by the “View it” tab. To open an e-book, click on the tab “View it” and follow the link. If you are researching a specific subject, you can limit the search results to “e-books” by restricting the search to “books” and “full texts online” in the “Tweak results” column. For more information, please refer to the Information on using e-books and databases.

Statistical databases relevant to sociology include:

• Google Dataset Research: An interdisciplinary search engine for data sets
• PolData: A collection of political datasets 
• ICPSR: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research
• CNTS Data Archive: Country-level data 
• Statista: Statistics from the fields of politics and economics
• GENESIS-Online: The statistical information system of the Federal Statistical Office
• GESIS Datensuche: Research data collection of the Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences
• MADATA: Research data repository of the University of Mannheim

The University Library supports researchers in research data management, meaning the structured collection and publishing of research data. In the institutional research data repository Mannheim Research Data Repository, research data can be stored and permanently archived.

There are many other national and international research data repositories for individual subject areas, for example the datorium of GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. By using datorium, it is possible to individually document, back-up and publish research data. One of the world’s largest data archives for Social Sciences, the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan is also worth mentioning. To use the data on the campus of the University of Mannheim, it is required that you register personally and agree to the terms of use.

The subject-specific repositories of the Social Sciences in Europe are united in the Consortium of European Social Data Archives (CESSDA).

The Registry of Research Data Repositories offers a detailed overview on the research data repositories from all subject areas.

DataCite allows you to access academic research data.

• Department of Sociology
• Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES)
• GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences

In Sociology, scientific journals are often ranked according to the impact factors of the journals. The impact factor of a journal indicates how often, on average, the journal’s articles are cited in other scientific journals. Relevant rankings for sociology are e. g. the SCImago Journal Ranking, the OOIR-Ranking or the Google Scholar Ranking.

To see the impact factors and contextual information, please refer to the Web of Science/Social Sciences Citation Index database or go directly to the Journal Citation Reports.