A scholarly journal is a publication released in regular instalments which contains research relating to a particular subject area. These are often referred to as periodicals or serials.

Journals are useful when you:

• are seeking information for your assignment or literature review
• need to find recently published papers on a particular topic
• want to identify important and current research in your field
• commence the ‘scoping exercise’ for your research project.

The Library has an extremely large collection of academic journals, many of which are available in full text electronic format. In much the same way as databases, these journals are fully searchable, or you can browse for content by publication or by subject area.

How do I find and access full text e-journals?

If you know the name of the journal you would like to browse or search in, you can enter its title in the search box on the homepage and click Search to access it.

Alternately, you can click on E-resources & Databases to access further information, and search e-journals by Title or Subject Area. To access content within a journal collection, simply click on its title. Once you have accessed your required journal, you may browse, or search as you would in a database.

You can get additional help with searching for journal articles through the Finding Journal Articles and More guide.

If you can't find the journal you need online, you can also search for print issues. If a print journal is available, it will list the Library branch it is located in under Location.

Issues of journals published before 1990 are usually stored off-campus at the ANU Print Repository. To access these, go to the item record and click on Print Repository under Find in Library and you will be prompted to fill in a request form. Make sure you are logged in!