How to: Find Journal Articles

If you have already done a database search (or are looking at the references in a bibliography) and now want to get your hands on a specific article, see the notes below.

But...

If you're trying to put together a list of articles on your research topic, start with a database search.

If you're trying to figure out which databases to search, start with Research by Subject or talk to a Reference librarian.

If you're trying to find out which journals the Library has and where in the building they are located, start with How to Find a Journal in the Library.

Decoding a Citation to a Journal Article
Searching the Proquest Direct database for articles on genetically modified food produces a long results list including the reference at Item 70 below:

Note the absence of the full text icon—the article is not available in full text online from ProQuest (although it could be available from some other electronic resource).

You may also have come across the same reference in the bibliography of an article you have already located.

Note the error in the paging.

Library Periodical Subscriptions:
Whether you learned of this article via a database search or by checking the references at the end of another article, the next step is to search the Schaffer Library Catalog or Journal Titles Available Through Aggregated Databases  to determine whether the Library subscribes to the journal entitled American Journal of Botany. Select Find Journal Titles and select Schaffer Library Journal and Serial Titles File.

Title Search:

Electronic Access to Journals:
Some of the journals the Library subscribes to in print format are also available electronically. The record in the catalog contains a link to the electronic version.

Schaffer Library has a print subscription to American Journal of Botany that goes back to 1925 and continuing through the present. It is also available from two online sources—through the journal publisher (the Botanical Society of America) from 1997 because we have a print subscription and through the JSTOR collection from the first year of publication in 1914 up until five years ago. (With JSTOR, the five-year wait for electronic access is standard.)

Other Ways to Access Electronic Journals:
If you want to see if a particular journal is available electronically from any of the Library's full text databases, click on the Journal Titles Available Through Aggregated Databases link.  The library has access to the full-text of many periodical titles through web databases that cover a variety of subjects (examples are EBSCOhost, Lexis-Nexis, and ProQuest; such databases are called aggregators). If you do not find a title listed in the above Schaffer Library Journal and Serial Titles File, use this option to determine whether one of the aggregators provides access to the title. Includes years of coverage, with hyperlinks either to the individual title or the specified database.

Holdings Information in a Database
Some databases—EBSCOhost, FirstSearch—provide journal holdings information, telling the searcher whether the Library subscribes to a journal found in a search. Some databases allow the searcher to limit the search to just those journals that a library has.

Holdings notes are useful generally but they are not always 100% accurate. Holdings information tells you that at some point in time the Library subscribed to the journal you are interested in. Sometimes a journal subscription will have been dropped before the article you want was published (or the Library's subscription will have been started after the date you need).

Link to OPAC/Link to External Full Text Resource
Some databases make looking up the journal you need a matter of simply clicking on the Link to OPAC button which opens a new window and automatically searches the Schaffer Library catalog to see if we subscribe to the journal. The SilverPlatter databases—BIOSIS Previews, Essay & General Literature Index, INSPEC (physics), Philosopher's Index, and PsycINFO—all offer this feature. Worldwide Political Science Abstracts published by Cambridge Scientific Abstracts calls the feature Locate Document.

Most of these databases also provide links to full text resources as well, which allows the searcher to retrieve the article itself from an external database or a publisher's website.

Common Trouble Spots — Dissertations
References to Dissertation Abstracts International (which appear in the PsycINFO, MLA International Bibliography, and EconLit databases) the are one of the most common sources of confusion to searchers. Researchers who come across a reference to Dissertation Abstracts International invariably want to see the dissertation itself, not the brief abstract.

Another Trouble Spot— Articles in Books
Chapters of books and articles collected together and published as books are another common source of confusion because of the way some databases list them.

In this example from MLA, Robin Sylvan is the author of an article entitled "Rap Music, Hip-Hop Culture, and 'The Future Religion of the World'." The source of this article is a book edited by Mazur and McCarthy entitled God in Details: American Religion in Popular Culture. When you search the catalog for this book (or make an Interlibrary loan request), use the book's editor as author or the title God in Details.