Journals are publications that are published on a regular and ongoing basis, for example, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually. They contain a selection of articles in a subject area by different authors. These articles are known as journal articles. Academic journal articles are written by researchers and their articles are reviewed by other experts in the same subject area, in a process called peer-review. Peer-reviewed journal articles are considered to be the best quality journal articles available. Journal articles are the best place to find the most recent research on a topic.
Here are some examples of ejournals you may find useful:
These are some of the most important databases for your subject:
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Search the archives of UK national and local newspapers:
What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. In Scholar you can search across many disciplines and sources, including journal articles, theses, books and abstracts, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
How is it different from Google?
Google has a broader scope than Google Scholar and looks for resources regardless of where they come from and who they are written by. Instead of searching the entire web, Google Scholar just searches for scholarly literature. This means you will get far more relevant, authoritative and up to date results.
Can I access full text articles?
Yes, but not always. Some articles are freely available, plus you can also set up Google Scholar to access the University’s journal subscriptions.
To do this click on Settings then Library Links. Type USW into the search box and select FINDit@University of South Wales – Viewonline@USW.Tick the boxes next to the results and save. You will now be able to access our subscriptions via Google Scholar.
Do I still need to use FINDit?
Google Scholar is a good starting point for your research, but please be aware that it doesn’t index everything. It is important to use FINDit as well to search our subscription databases and journals for relevant journal articles.
For more information have a look at our Guide to FINDit or contact your Faculty Librarian.
Always evaluate the quality of the information you find on the free web using criteria such as the CRAAP test.
Here are some links to high quality websites in your subject area:
BoB is Learning on Screen’s on demand TV and radio service for education that lets you record and view TV and radio online from over 65 free-to-air channels including an archive of over 2 million programmes. View on campus or at home (UK only).
BoB Curated Playlists
This is a growing collection of curated playlists hosted by Learning on Screen and curated by academics on a diverse range of disciplines, subject areas or modules.
Google Scholar
Contains peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and articles from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Youcan link Scholar to FINDit to discover quickly if we have access to subscribed content.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
This is a service provided by the Knowledge Media Institute based at The Open University, United Kingdom. The goal of the project is to aggregate all open access content distributed across different systems, such as repositories and open access journals, enrich this content using text mining and data mining, and provide free access to it through a set of services.
Semantic Scholar
This was created by a team at the Allen Institute for AI, and was released at the end of 2015 as a search engine for academic publications.
OAIster (Open Archives Initiative)
Search millions of records of open access resources.