This FAQ provides advice on how to find journal articles for a topic, but also explains how to search for whole Journal titles.
The terms 'article' and 'journal' are sometimes treated as if they are interchangeable but there is a key distinction to bear in mind. Articles are specific pieces of writing that discuss a topic or subject in detail, whereas Journals are the overall publications that the articles appear in. Journals are usually published regularly throughout the year and may be in print or online formats, or both.
Normally when conducting research, students will be looking to obtain individual journal articles and research papers rather than browsing a journal in full, although it is useful to know how to search for both should you need to.
For finding Journal Articles, there are a couple of important places you should look in order to obtain full-text materials:
- The Library catalogue - LibrarySearch.
- Automatically looks for items that the Library has full access to so you can read them right away.
- The Availability filters on the left hand side are useful for honing your search. You can limit your results to items that are available online, and can specify that you want the articles to be peer-reviewed - this means that the articles have been scrutinised by experts before being published, so you know that you're using sources of the highest academic quality.
- For comprehensive help on searching the catalogue, please see our FAQ 'How do I search the LibrarySearch catalogue?'
- The individual subject databases recommended for your topic on our Subject Resources page.
- Use as many of the ones listed as you can because different Journal Titles are available in different databases.
- Not all items listed in the databases will immediately be available in full text via the Library subscriptions, for example there may be a publisher embargo on the most recent issues or we may only have access to a specific date range. If full text access is important, look for an option to limit the results to 'full text' only.
- For help on searching, please see our FAQ 'How do I search...?'
If you want to search for an overall Journal title - for example, because your tutor has recommended that a particular Journal is highly respected for publishing articles in your subject area - this is how:
- Use LibrarySearch the library catalogue. Enter the Journal Title or ISSN in the search bar then click on the drop-down menu and change it from ‘Search everything’ to ‘Journals’.
- If the Library has any access to the title, results will appear. The below example shows the title Nursing Times in print and online formats. Our FAQ 'How can I check what access the Library has to a Journal?' gives more details on what the results mean.
- Sometimes you may not know the precise name of the Journal you need, and just want to see what Journal titles match for a certain keyword (such as Diabetes). You can type the keyword(s) into the main LibrarySearch bar and change the drop-down menu from ‘Search everything’ to ‘Journals’.
- This will look for your keywords within the titles of Journals, wherever they appear. For example, the image below shows the word 'diabetes' underlined in yellow to highlight the word you searched for. It appears in the Journal titles Pediatric diabetes, Primary care diabetes and Canadian Journal of diabetes, plus many more.
- Bear in mind that the keyword approach above may mean you miss out on discovering relevant journals, simply because the word(s) you've chosen do not appear in the title of all Journals that cover the topic. Please see our 'Is there a list of recommended Journals for my subject?' FAQ if you want to know how to browse for Journals on a specific subject.
If you need help searching, or cannot find the Journal you are looking for, please contact the Library.
