Academic journals are published regularly (eg: monthly or quarterly), these contain journal articles relating to a specific subject/topic area; they are essential for finding original research, analysis, case studies and literature reviews that you can then cite in your assignments.
Academic Journal, or Journal refers to the whole body of work published under that journal title, such as: "The BMJ" or "The Lancet".
Journal Article, often called "an article" or "a paper" refers to the research published within the journal such and the titles are more specific, for example: "CAR T-cell therapy in autoimmune diseases"
A a good place to start your search for academic journals is Library Search. You can also search for academic journal articles in specific Medical Literature databases like PubMed or EMBASE.
More guidance on using Library Search to find academic journal articles is further down the page. Guidance on using Specific databses can be found on the Medical Literature databases page
Academic journals are peer-reviewed. Peer-review is a quality control process. Articles are read by specialists in the field of research before they are published. These readers (called reviewers) check that the article is based on good research, that the methodology is appropriate, that the data collected is valid and credible, that the article brings new knowledge to the field of research.
The Library subscribes to journals chosen by the Faculty that you can access in print and online. The most effective way of searching is to use Library Search so that you can search across all available sources.
Sometimes you may find accessing the full text of an article that you haven’t found through Library Search difficult. You may have found the article on Google Scholar or PubMed where the links do not take you to full text, or through a publishers website that asks you to pay for access, or from a list of references in a book.
Using Library Search to search for the title of the article you have found is the best way to solve this. If the University has a subscription to the article you need, Library Search will give you the best link to access it and if what you are looking for is not available through Library Search then you can request a copy of the article through Inter Library Loan. Watch the video below for instructions:
[Note: the Resource Sharing option shown in the video is now labelled: Inter Library Loan]
If you know the title of the Journal you would like to search for select the ‘Journal Titles’ option from the library web page. It is easier to start at our website and follow a link from there to the journal or specific article but sometimes you will need to log in once you are on the publisher’s website.