Academic Journals & Articles
Academic journals are an important source of information for your study and research. You may think of them a bit like scholarly magazines. Journals publish issues periodically, for example monthly or quarterly, and most academic journals are peer-reviewed. Journals contain 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.
The best place to start your search for academic journals is Library Search. You may also search for academic journal articles in specific health databases like CINAHL and Medline.
More guidance on using Library Search to find academic journal articles is further down the page.
What is a peer-reviewed journal?
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.
Searching for & Accessing Journal Articles
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.
Watch this video to see how to get started with using Library Search to find journal articles:
Watch this video for a demonstration of the advanced search feature in Library Search:
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 an article or 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 the full text. 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 a demonstration:
[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.
- Journal Title Search
Search our journal subscriptions by journal title.