How to research: Articles

A journal is a collection of articles within a particular academic subject area, which is published on a regular basis; journals are published in print or electronically or sometimes both.

Journals are more up to date than books and are a good place to find the latest research on a subject area.

The library subscribes to a wide range of journals and you can access journals via the library catalogue FINDit.

Types of journal:

Peer-reviewed or Scholarly Journals

Academic Journals

Professional Journals

At Treforest and Glyntaff libraries, the print journals have a classmark which you will need to find the journal on the library shelves; they will have the same classmark as books of a similar subject area.

To find the classmark of a journal;

• find the journal in FINDit
• click on the locations link in the item
• classmark will appear in the locations box and it is composed of numbers and letters, as with the books.
• above the classmark, you will see which USW library holds the book.

In Cardiff and Newport libraries, the print journals are organised alphabetically by journal title.

e-journals can be accessed via the library catalogue FINDit in several ways;

• If you are looking for a specific e-journal title you can use the Find Journal link in FINDit.
• You can also search for for a specific title within a Database
• If you want to search the full-text content of an article then you need to select article search on FINDit.

Not everything is available in FINDit and you may find it useful to use our databases guide to search for more specialist resources in your subject area.

If you are unable to find a journal/journal article in FINDit, then you can request an inter-library loan; this is an item that is supplied by another academic library e.g. The British Library.

A journal article can be delivered either as a photocopy (to the USW library of your choice) or electronically.

Interlibrary loan requests can be made via FINDit and help for this can be found on the library website.

There is a £3 charge per item for inter-library loans, for undergraduate and postgraduate students.