Finding Journal Articles

What are journals?

Journals, which may also be called periodicals, serials or magazines, are useful for very specific information or very recent information. Articles in journals are excellent sources of information for assignments. They are often the place where research is first published. Besides being more up to date than information published in books, they usually concentrate on topical issues or detail particular aspects of a subject. References to journal articles can come from several sources: they may be mentioned on your subject reading list; or you may have to use a journal index to find articles on a specific subject or topic.

Finding journal articles on a specific topic - Journal Indexes

To find journal articles on a particular topic you will need to use a Journal Index.
Journal Indexes provide references to articles in a number of different journals. Indexes are available in print and electronic formats.

Electronic indexes are commonly referred to as databases, electronic databases, or online databases. Electronic indexes accessed via the Internet have become the most popular choice, due to the ease and speed of electronic searching. They are more up-to-date, offer a wider range of databases and searching options, and also allow you to search several fields and several years simultaneously.

Despite the popularity of the electronic formats, print indexes are still useful. Print indexes may be the only way to search for older material, as many electronic formats only index articles published in more recent years. Indexes can be very general in subject coverage or they may concentrate on specific subject areas, such as psychology or marine biology.

Some indexes provide just a citation (reference to a journal article), but most provide abstracts (brief summaries of the contents of an article). Some indexes also offer full-text articles.

NOTE: Individual journal articles are not indexed in the Tropicat catalogue! This means that you cannot search Tropicat using the article title or the author's name.

Choosing the most suitable Journal Index for your search

• Consult the Library's Subject Resources web page to see the most useful databases for your subject area.
• Use the Electronic Databases web page to view a complete list and descriptions of all the databases that JCU subscribes to.

NOTE: The electronic databases can also be accessed from off campus. You will need to first enable remote access using your JCU userid and password. A few databases may require special passwords which are available from InfoHelp.

Searching Electronic Databases/Indexes

Databases vary in their subject content and search screens, but the same general searching techniques apply to all databases. To construct an effective search you will need to identify the keywords from your topic, and combine them to create a search statement. Usually you have to join these terms together by using one of the Boolean operators, AND, OR, and NOT.

• Use AND to find all of the words e.g. corals AND spawning. Using AND narrows your search and makes it more specific.

• Use OR to find any of the words e.g. cosmetics OR makeup. Using OR allows you to retrieve records related to the same concept and broadens the search.

• Use NOT to find one word without the other e.g. bass NOT fish. Using NOT allows you to exclude a set of records related to a particular search term.

• You can truncate your search words to find words with the same stem by using a truncation symbol (usually * or ?). e.g. biochem* finds biochemics, biochemistry, etc.

• Parentheses/brackets can also be used to define the order of operations. e.g. (liver OR lung) AND disease

Retrieving Search Results

There are different retrieval options available depending on the database, but you will usually have a choice of:

• printing your records
• saving records to a disk
• or emailing the records to your email address.

Before printing, saving, or emailing, you will usually have to mark or select your records by clicking on the box to the left of each record. After displaying your marked records, you can then choose to print, save, or email the selected records.

Finding the journal article using the citation/reference

Once you have found a reference that you need, the next step is to find the actual article. First you need to work out the title of the journal in which the article appears. This is usually obvious, but some indexes use abbreviations for journal titles. To get the full title, the hard copy version of an index will usually have a list of abbreviations, or there are also standard lists of journal abbreviations shelved near InfoHelp.

A reference to a journal article will usually look something like the following:

Prideaux, M. Presiding over a world heritage graveyard? Habitat Australia 27(12), April 1999, p16(1).

To find out if the JCU Library holds a particular journal, search in Tropicat using the search option "Journal title begins..." for the title of the journal (note: this is not the same as the article title). For example, to search for the above reference, you would select the Journal title begins... option in Tropicat, and type in Habitat Australia for your journal title.

When you locate a journal title on Tropicat, the record will show whether JCU holds the title in printed form, or electronic form, or both. There will be a URL linking to the electronic form. For the printed form, note the shelf call number, and refer to the Subscription Summary for information on particular issues held by the Library. The Subscription Summary screen includes information about any issues that are at the Bindery or reported missing. If the volume you are seeking is not in its proper place, try checking the sorting shelves for volumes that are awaiting shelving, or it may be in use by someone else. If you fail to find a particular volume on two occasions, please inform InfoHelp and staff will instigate a search.

NOTE: The JCU Library does not hold every journal listed in the journal indexes, no library does! If you need an article that is not held by the JCU Library, it can often be obtained for you through the Document Supply Service. There is an Interlibrary Loan charge for this service. Please contact Document Supply staff for further information.

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Finding Journal Articles - Online Tutorial

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