Academic Search Premier – This EBSCO database offers full-text articles from thousands of journals, magazines and newspapers. It covers many subject areas and is a good starting point for research. You can narrow down your searches based on peer-reviewed, scholarly or academic journals.
JSTOR – JSTOR is a digital library that archives high-quality academic journals, books and other primary sources. It has a very large collection of scholarly works, dating back to the earliest published academic papers. You can reliably find in-depth studies and historical sources through JSTOR.
ProQuest – ProQuest offers a variety of databases across different subject areas. Some useful ones for capstones include ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection and ProQuest Research Library. These databases contain thesis and dissertation works, peer-reviewed journal articles, reports and more.
PILOTS Database – Published by the Transportation Research Board, this database catalogues thousands of transportation research reports and projects. It’s a specialized resource for capstone topics related to transportation, traffic, urban planning and civil/environmental engineering projects.
LexisNexis Academic – In addition to legal and news content, LexisNexis Academic provides access to scholarly works, statistics and reports on a variety of policy and social science topics. Its strong points are public records, health and medical publications, and business/company profiles.
ScienceDirect – ScienceDirect is Elsevier’s platform offering full-text access to scientific publications across physical sciences, life sciences, health sciences, social sciences and more. You can find journal articles, book chapters and reference works through ScienceDirect.
Web of Science – An excellent citation indexing service, Web of Science allows you to not only access articles but also see which other works have cited them. This makes it simple to explore the research landscape of a topic through citation mapping. It indexes publications back to 1900s across scientific and social sciences domains.
Google Scholar – While not a full-text database, Google Scholar serves as a useful discovery tool to find relevant academic literature on a topic. You can set up alerts to track new additions to your areas of research interest. Google Scholar also shows you citation metrics like number of citations for an article.
Government Publications – Websites of relevant government agencies often archive reports, statistics, data and policy documents. For example, the EPA Database, Census Bureau Publications, CDC Vital Statistics and other official sites are credible for public health, social or policy topics. International agencies like WHO and UN also offer useful data.
Organization Websites – Non-profit organizations, think tanks, research institutes have extensive subject-specific libraries and archives available freely online or via membership. Examples include publications from Brookings Institution, Rand Corporation, Pew Research Center, Gallup and more. Always check for peer-review or methodologies used in their studies.
Conference Papers Indexes – Indexes like Web of Science Conference Proceedings Citation Index tracks proceedings presented at academic conferences. You may find recent case studies, pilots or trials described in conference papers not (yet) published in journals. Check association websites or Google for open access conference materials.
Apart from databases and compiled sources, you should also evaluate information from other reliable open web sources like educational institution repositories, not-for-profit foundations, federal and state government websites and reports. As with any research source, it is important to critically evaluate the methodology, author/publisher credentials, date of publication and peer-review status of materials. Cross-referencing facts across multiple independent sources will help validate the quality and accuracy of information for your capstone project. The goal is to incorporate only credible, authoritative data and analysis to support your research objectives. Let me know if you need any specific suggestions on searching these resources for your topic.