LibGuides: Library Guide for Law & Government: Search for journal articles and access databases

Library Search

Using journal articles in your assignments

'Periodical' is an umbrella term for newspapers, magazines, journals - any title published regularly or irregularly. The Library subscribes to thousands of scholarly journals both in print and (mostly) online - you can search for a specific journal in Journal Finder. You will come across journal articles many times in the course of your studies; they may appear on your reading list and your lecturers will encourage you to consult journal articles when you're doing research, particularly when preparing your literature review.

Journal articles are excellent sources of scholarly information because they can provide very in-depth, up-to-date coverage of a subject; they are typically very structured and written by experts in a given field. Crucially, like books, journal articles that appear in scholarly academic journals are "peer-reviewed" which means they have been critically reviewed and evaluated by a panel of experts before being okay-ed for publication. All of this means that you (as researchers) are assured of the excellent quality of information in a published journal article.

This short video shows you how to find journal articles using Library Search

Selected law journals

Ireland & beyond...

Irish Jurist 1966 to Present [via Westlaw IE]	Irish Criminal Law Journal 1991 to Present [via Westlaw IE]	Irish Employment Law Journal 2004 to Present [via Westlaw IE]
Irish Law Times (ILT) 1983 to Present [via Westlaw IE]	Law Society Gazette 1999 to Present [via ...]	Irish Journal of Family Law 1998 to Present [via Westlaw IE]
Bar Review 1996 to Present [via Westlaw IE]	Irish Planning & Environmental Law Journal 1994 to Present [via Westlaw IE]	Hibernian Law Journal 2000 to Present [via Westlaw IE]
Yale Law Journal 1891 to Present [via HeinOnline]	Common Market Law Review 1963 to Present [via Kluwer Law International]	Stanford Law Review 1948 to Present [via HeinOnline]

Databases

Before databases came along, we relied on indexes, abstracts, contents pages, and a whole lot of reading when trying to find material relevant to our research.

Databases are incredibly powerful engines that allow us to search the content of thousands of journal articles by keyword, as well as provide us with digital access to the full text of many of them. Some databases are multi-disciplinary whilst others are discipline-specific.

Lots of our databases are made available to us via the nationally funded IReL consortium (IReL stands for the Irish Research eLibrary), some we subscribe to as an institution; others are freely available online.

Click for access, then sign in with your DCU username and password where required.

Be more efficient! Search the databases we recommend below

Databases we recommend for law and government topics - start searching here

Politics, international relations, development, security and conflict studies
Law

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Full-text access to more than 8,000 journals (over 7,000 peer-reviewed) and indexing for almost 12,000 covering the following disciplines: business, communications, computer science, biology, chemistry, engineering, physics, psychology, education and nursing.
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) This link opens in a new window
The world's largest archive of social science data for research with over 6,300 studies from sociology, political science, criminology, history, education, demography, gerontology, international relations, public health, economics and psychology.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Archive of almost 2,000 core scholarly journals in Anthropology, Economics, Education, Finance, History, Language & Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Sociology and Statistics.
Nexis UK (News & Business) This link opens in a new window
The new Lexis-Nexis platform for news and business, containing full text access to thousands of newspapers and company, financial and market research data.
OECD iLibrary This link opens in a new window
The iLibary hosts statistics and factbooks for the 34 OECD member states and for selected non-OECD countries. Its areas of focus include: economics, education, health, goverance and science and technology.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is one of the largest multi-disciplinary abstracting and indexing databases of research literature and quality web sources. It offers access to over 16,000 titles from more than 4000 international publishers, with abstracts available back to 1966. Citation data is available from 1996. Coverage includes scientific, technical, medical and social sciences literature including, arts and humanities. There are also 23 million patent records from 5 patent offices as well as links to 'Articles in Press' from over 3,000 journals.
SSRN (Social Science Research Network) This link opens in a new window
Open access repository with abstracts of around 158,000 scholarly working papers with approximately 4 million downloads per year. Specialised network subsets includeCorporate Governance, legal Scholarship, Negotiations, Political Science and Economics.
Taylor and Francis Online This link opens in a new window
Previously Informaworld. Access to 1000+ peer reviewed journal titles published by Taylor and Francis, and a selection of journals published by Routledge and Psychology Press, covering arts & humanities, social sciences, sport, physics, mathematics, and chemistry.
United Nations Development Reports This link opens in a new window
International human development indicators including searchable datasets and country reports from the United Nations
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
WOS is a multi-disciplinary citation database covering over 10,000 of the world's highest impact research journals. It also offers the unique "citation searching" feature, allowing users to see how many times a paper/author has been cited and by whom. It consists of the three databases: the Science Citation Index Expanded (1945-present), the Social Sciences Citation Index (1956-present) and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present).
Wiley Online Library This link opens in a new window
Full-text access to over 1,200 Wiley journals, E-books, reference works and databases covering subject areas including: business, chemistry, computer science, engineering, law, life sciences, mathematic, physics, psychology and social sciences. Register to take advantage of alerting services and stay on top of the latest developments in your field.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts provides citations, abstracts, and indexing of the international serials literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration / policy.

BAILII This link opens in a new window
Provides free access to British and Irish case law & legislation, European Union case law, Law Commission reports, and other law-related British and Irish material.
Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations This link opens in a new window
This database allows you to search for the meaning of abbreviations for English language legal publications, from the British Isles, the Commonwealth and the United States, including those covering international and comparative law.
Curia This link opens in a new window
Provides free access to case law from the EU Court of Justice, General Court and Civil Service Tribunal from 1997. Includes opinions form the Advocate General.
EUR-Lex This link opens in a new window
Free access, in the 24 official EU languages, to the Official Journal of the European Union, EU law (EU treaties, directives, regulations, decisions, consolidated legislation, etc.), preparatory acts (legislative proposals, reports, green and white papers, etc.), EU case-law (judgements, orders, etc.), international agreements and EFTA documents.
Heinonline This link opens in a new window
HeinOnline is the world's largest image-based legal research database offering access to tens of millions of pages of research material. Fully searchable and browseable access to full-text collections.
HUDOC This link opens in a new window
The European Court of Human Rights HUDOC Portal is a powerful, user-friendly information system which provides free online access to the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, the European Commission of Human Rights and the Committee of Ministers.
Irish Statute Book This link opens in a new window
Includes Acts of the Oireachtas and Statutory Instruments, the official versions of which remain the printed versions published by Government Publications. Track amendments to legislation, access the Constitution and a selection of pre-1922 legislation while links to external legislation resources are also provided.
Lexis Library (Legal) This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive legal database containing case law, expert commentary, and primary and secondary legislation as amended.
Making of Modern Law This link opens in a new window
MoML provides access to 10.6 million pages of legal history relating to American and British Commonwealth law from 1800. It allows full text searching of 22,000 rare works from casebooks to local practice manuals to speeches - all of which are subdivided into 99 subject areas.
vLex Justis This link opens in a new window vLex Justis is the new platform enabling access to upgraded JustisOne collections and offers a global index of legal materials to search across. It provides full text access to Irish, EU, UK, Canadian case law, as well as the ability to access legislation and much more for these jurisdictions
Westlaw Edge UK This link opens in a new window
Westlaw UK is an online legal database containing a comprehensive collection of UK Law Reports, legislation and Law journals as well as EU, US and International content. Combined with a highly sophisticated online platform, the constantly updated database provides superb access to UK, European and International Law. includes CELEX.
Westlaw IE This link opens in a new window
Updated daily, Westlaw IE offers online access to Irish legal materials such as case reports, case digests, legal journals and unreported judgements. Search Round Hall's legal material dating as far back as 1976.

See our A-Z list for full access to all library databases.

Contact

Alexander Kouker | O'Reilly Library | Glasnevin Campus | alexander.kouker@dcu.ie

Click here to view our guide to finding Irish and European cases

Click here to view our guide to finding Irish and European legislation

Got Questions?

LETS is a series of online tutorials for students to help you to locate, evaluate and use information effectively.