Resources for International Relations Students

Disclosure: International Relations Careers may be compensated by course providers.

The development of the relations of states with each other and with international organizations and certain subnational entities and the increased focus on these relations has led to a greater effort in documenting these developments. We have compiled a list of 18 international relation resources ranging from websites, databases, search engines, journals and podcasts aiming to facilitate the quest into the world of international relations.

E-International relations

E-International Relations is the world’s leading international relations website with daily publications of unique content aimed at academics, general interest readers, and students of Politics and International Relations. It provides an academic perspective on global events. In addition to the constant publications on the website, E-International relations publishes scholarly books presented in an accessible format. The site contains an exhaustive list of websites for researching politics and international relations, easily accessed by selecting your area of interest.

WWW Virtual Library: International Relations

WWW Virtual Library system is a frequently updated Internet directory of over 2000 annotated links to high-quality English-language resources for a wide range of current international affairs, international relations, international studies, global studies, and global education topics. These sites are recommended for regular research use, and are carefully selected for their cost-free, authoritative, and reliable information and analysis. Each website is described only in general terms because of the typically rapid changes in details of its contents and features. You can use the constant menu on the left-hand side of every page to navigate this whole directory by selecting your area of interest. Resources are listed alphabetically on each page, within categories. Any major directories, specialized search engines, other locator services, or blogs are featured at the top of each page. All referred sites will open in a new window or tab of your browser.

ELDIS

Eldis is a database and email service of information sources on international development. It provides free access to relevant, up-to-date and diverse research on international development issues. The database includes over 50,000 summaries and provides free links to full-text research and policy documents from over 8,000 publishers. You can search for the information you need according to key development topics and the country they relate to. The Key Issues Guides provide a concise and accessible introduction to key development issues and, for researchers, are an excellent way to introduce research evidence to a broad global audience of development practitioners, decision-makers and researchers. The blog offers commentary, lessons and opinion from invited contributors and partners.

Global Policy Forum

Global Policy Forum (GPF) is an independent policy watchdog that monitors and reports on United Nations activities and developments in multilateral affairs. It scrutinizes global policymaking and promotes accountability and civic participation in areas related to social justice, sustainability, human rights, peace and security, and international law. GPF monitors UN negotiations and processes, undertakes original research and maintains a dynamic communications programme that includes publications, briefings, presentations, and social media. Each year, the GPF publishes a variety of comprehensive issue-specific reports, policy papers, shorter technical texts, and position statements on the latest developments in the respective areas of work. It is simple to use – the site is structured according to specific issue areas and publications.

Gale

Gale is a research and educational publishing company with a focus on education, learning, and research resources online. Gale has a vast digital archive of Primary Sources, research databases, reference books (both eBook and print), blogs and other formats of sources of information. The website provides a database of 1444 sources of information concerning international relations.  It is simple to use – you can type anything into the search box, and results can be filtered by source.

UN iLibrary

UN iLibrary is the comprehensive global search, discovery, and viewing source for digital content created by the United Nations compiling 6,500 publications in all six official languages of the United Nations. The online collection provides easy access to thousands of books, reports, and journals created by the United Nations available for search, share, and download. The UN iLibrary platform offers useful research features: full-text search, user-friendly navigation, granular search results down to the article and chapter level, and a citation tool. It includes books, working papers, journals, and datasets from the 50+ UN departments and agencies, covering a wide range of the UN’s priority issues, international agreements, treaties, declarations and UN resolutions. The site firstly lays out its latest content, however it is completely searchable so if you are looking for a particular case, or a certain topic or right, you can search a keyword to discover what you need.

The United Nations Treaty Collection

The United Nations Treaty Collection (UNTC) is a global portal providing online access to comprehensive information relating to the work of the Treaty Section of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs consisting of more than 560 multilateral treaties. The site has a refined search engine which makes accessing multilateral treaties and additional information regarding said treaty easy by typing keywords or by selecting pre-arranged search options.

The Center for Security Studies (CSS)

The Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zürich is a center of competence for Swiss and international security policy. It offers security policy expertise in research, teaching, and consulting activities. The purpose of the Resources section of the CSS website is outreach, it features the analyses of CSS experts, external partners and like-​minded institutions in order to promote dialogue on international relations and security-​related issues. Resources include but are not limited to: blog posts, external datasets, graphics and a digital library. In addition, the ‘Organizations and Resources Page Network’ section features the location and contact details of approximately 2,700 organizations that focus on international relations and security studies. The site can be easily navigated by selecting your area of interest in the resources section.

Journal of International Relations and Foreign Policy

Journal of International Relations and Foreign Policy is an international peer-reviewed journal published by American Research Institute for Policy Development. The content of the journal ranges widely across the whole of International Relations and covers a wide range of subjects and theories. It publishes articles on contemporary world politics and the global political economy from a variety of methodologies and approaches. The journal seeks original manuscripts that provide theoretically informed empirical analyses of issues in international relations. E-Publication FirstTM is a feature offered through the journal platform. It allows PDF versions of manuscripts that have been peer reviewed and accepted, to be hosted online prior to their inclusion in a final printed journal. Readers can freely access or cite the article. The accepted papers are published online within one week after the completion of all necessary publishing steps.

The European Journal of International Relations

The European Journal of International Relations (EJIR) is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering international relations. It is published by Sage Publications on behalf of the European Standing Group on International Relations and the European International Studies Association. EJIR publishes peer-reviewed scholarly contributions across the full breadth of the field of International Relations, from cutting edge theoretical debates to topics of contemporary and historical interest to scholars and practitioners in the IR community. EJIR can be easily accessed through the Sage Journals website.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies

The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies is part of the larger online Oxford Research Encyclopedia, a dynamic digital encyclopedia continuously updated by the world’s leading scholars and researchers. It is regularly updated by the world’s leading scholars and researchers with peer-reviewed, substantive academic publishing’s. Even though The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies is available to institutions and individuals through subscriptions, a considerable portion of sources remains freely accessible. You can easily access the articles by accessing the website and refining the search depending on the subject area of your interest.

Undercurrents Podcast

Undercurrent is a regular podcast series featuring interviews with Chatham House experts – and others – about the critical underlying issues which are shaping modern society. Chatham House is an independent policy institute and a forum for debate and dialogue. It continues to offer solutions and commence dialogues on prominent global challenges based on independent, peer reviewed reports, research papers and briefings offering new ideas and policy recommendations. Each podcast episode analyses in-depth a specific subject. Undercurrent Podcasts can be accessed on Libsyn, iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE)

The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine is one of the world’s most voluminous search engines especially for academic web resources. BASE provides more than 240 million documents from more than 8,000 content providers, many in international studies topics. You can access the full texts of about 60% of the indexed documents for free through open access to full-text. BASE is operated by Bielefeld University Library in Germany. BASE indexes the metadata of all kinds of academically relevant resources – journals, institutional repositories, digital collections and more. The search engine has several particular features which ease the research process by offering multilingual searches, displaying of search results including precise bibliographic data, several options for sorting the results list and more.

CORE (COnnecting REpositories)

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers. For each search result a link to the full text PDF or full text web page is provided. Many international studies articles are available, in full-text. CORE harvests research papers from such as institutional and subject repositories, and open access and hybrid journals. CORE currently contains 210,332,546 open access articles collected from 10,259 data providers around the world. The search engine is easily accessible and offers options which can refine your search and narrow down a list of research papers regarding your area of interest.

DART-Europe E-Theses Portal

DART-Europe is a portal for open access research theses as a partnership of national and university libraries and consortia to improve global access to European research theses. The DART-Europe E-theses Portal is managed by UCL Library Services. Users have access to 1,098,458 open access research theses from 570 Universities in 29 European countries. Research theses can be easily accessed through the portal by narrowing down your area of interest in the search engine.

International and Area Studies Commons

The International and Area Studies Commons of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons is a website which publishes open-source academic papers in international and area studies topics. The International and Area Studies Commons is a part of the much larger Digital Commons Network which offers full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work.

Directory of Open Access Journals

The Directory of Open Access Journals is a website that hosts a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. All DOAJ services are free of charge including being indexed. All data is freely available. It provides access to more than 6 million articles in thousands of scholarly journals from over 126 countries and 80 languages. The website can be accessed easily and journals and articles can be identified through the search engine which narrows down your search depending on your area of interest.

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) is an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination, and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). The website of the organization provides a worldwide directory to find online electronic theses and dissertations related but not limited to international relations and global affairs suitable for academics, students and researchers with a particular focus on these areas. The theses and dissertations can be accessed can be filtered by country/region or by typing anything into the search box.