The Library subscribes to thousands of scholarly journals both in print and (mostly) online. These journals are classed as 'periodicals,' i.e. any title published regularly or irregularly. The journal articles that are published in these journals 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 have been written by experts in a given field. 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 approved for publication.
Journal articles may appear on your reading lists and your lecturers will encourage you to consult journal articles when you're doing research, particularly when preparing your literature review. They contain certain elements that will help you to identify them easily - learn more in our video below.
When you have a reference to a journal article, search for the title and author of the article in Library Search. You can use the filters on the left of the screen to narrow the results to show 'articles' only - see a demonstration in the short video below.
If you don't easily find the journal article you're looking for in Library Search, you can also search for it in Journal Finder using the article's volume number, issue number and publication date. To do this, just enter in the title of the main journal, then use the details you have to narrow your result by year, then volume and issue number. From this point just click into the relevant issue and follow the page numbers down to find the article you're looking for. To access the article, click on PDF for full text.
You can also search for journal articles through Google Scholar. First, change your settings in Google Scholar so that you get a quick link to our subscriptions on the right side of the page when an article is available. Go to settings > library links > type in Dublin City University - select Full text @ DCU Library and Findit@DCU and click save. A Google Scholar search can be useful if you have a reference to a journal article but you think the date, volume or issue number may be listed incorrectly. Just enclose the title of the article you're looking for in quotation marks and search.
Use the library's databases to do a more focused search for journal articles that relate to your topic. Click here for more information.
Click on the buttons below to access some of the databases we recommend for English Literature
Email: geraldine.mcnamara@dcu.ie
Phone: (01) 700 8744