Step 3. Journal Articles and Database Searching
What is a journal?
You may be asked by your lecturer to refer to scholarly or academic journals and peer reviewed articles in your assignment.
The following will help you understand what these are and why you should use them.
- Explaining Journals Articles (How-to guide)
- How to identify peer
reviewed articles for your assignments
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KB)
How to find journal articles
If you have the citation details of a particular journal article you can find it via the library catalogue.
When you are starting your research from scratch, looking through individual journals is a time-consuming and inefficient way to find relevant articles. Instead you can use Summon or a library database to find journal articles on a topic.
Using Summon
Summon is a Google like search engine accessed from the Library home page. It allows you to search across most of the Library's print and electronic resources, finding journal articles, books, audio or video items all in one search.
Discover your library's
research content with Summon
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Using Databases
You can also search library databases to find journal articles. Library databases, which may be multidisciplinary or subject specific, provide access to journal articles, conference papers, dissertations, reports, reviews and many other items of "grey literature" that cannot be found from a Google search. The following shows you how to identify the best databases for your topic:
Which database should I use
to find journal articles on my topic?
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MB)
Searching in databases is not like searching in Google. Knowing some simple database search techniques will help you to find relevant articles. The Database Searching "How to Guide" will give you some tips.
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