This tutorial introduces you to journals. It will explain what they are, why you
use them, where they are located and how to find articles in journals.
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A journal is a publication that contains a number of articles or features.
Most journals are published regularly – for example monthly or four times a
year. Each individual part or issue will be given a number or some other form
of description such as Winter.
A set number of parts or issues form a volume. Generally, this will cover a
calendar year of the journal but this sometimes varies.
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Journals are usually far more up-to-date than books. The British Medical
Journal, for example, will carry the current week’s health news.
The best quality journals are ‘peer reviewed’. This means that articles are not
accepted for publication until they have been vetted and approved by
specialists in that area.
Books tend to take much longer to produce and will often explain a subject
rather than discuss particular issues or complications relating to it. Books
have to appeal to a wider audience and you may only find a few chapters
relevant to you within a very large piece of work.
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If you are looking for a particular journal article, the most effective way to find
out if we have it in stock, is to search the library catalogue for the journal title
to see if it available in print format.
Alternatively, you can browse the journal shelves for the titles in your subject
area. This will give you the opportunity to see the current topical issues.
Some journal titles are available electronically as well as in print format whilst
others are only available electronically so it is worth checking the eJournals AZ list on the Library Services web site as well as the library catalogue.
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The current issues of print journals are arranged together in alphabetical
order.
Anything published before the current year are housed in what is called the
‘back issues’. These are also arranged in alphabetical order of journal title.
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If your lecturer has recommended that you read a specific journal article,
he/she may give you the citation. As seen in the first example on this slide, a
citation will provide the basic elements of information for you to find the
article.
Here we can see that the title of the journal is the ‘Australian Occupational
Therapy Journal’, the year the article was published was 2005. The next
number in the sequence refers to the volume number, 52. The number in
brackets indicates the part or issue number, 4 and finally the citation finishes
with the page numbers.
If you know the journal title but some of the citation details are missing, as in
our second example, you can use the index to help you locate the part or
issue and page numbers. Where available, you will find a subject and author
index at the back of a bound volume or in the last part or issue of a volume
sequence. Using this example, we would look at the index for the year 2005
and the author Lynne Adamson to determine that we need to go to issue 4
and page 269.
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Looking for an article on a particular subject without any help is like looking for
a needle in haystack!
Fortunately help is at hand with indexing and abstracting services. These
services are provided by companies or organisations who collate ‘citation’
details from selected journals – often in subject groupings. As well as
providing the citation details, some services also supply an ‘abstract’.
A bibliographic database is an electronic collection of citations within a
particular subject area which will also help you find journal articles.
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Traditional indexing and abstracting services are available in printed formats.
Indexes will provide basic citation details which will allow you to locate a
journal article.
Abstracts supply the same citation details as well as a brief summary or
‘abstract’ of the contents of the article. This allows you to judge more easily if
the article will be of relevance to you.
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Looking for references to articles or books or literature searching, is best
performed in a structured way.
Bibliographic databases do not respond well to natural language such as full
sentences or questions. Before you start searching, it is important to have a
clear idea about the keywords you are going to use. Keywords are search
terms for finding information. Spend a few minutes, jotting down on a piece of
paper as many different aspects of the terms as you can.
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