When looking for academic journal articles you can use the 'everything' search in Library Search or search directly in the databases below, which we’ve selected as being most relevant to your subject area.
Databases are the best place to find academic journal articles as they offer advanced search tools, metric data, and export options for referencing. These databases also often provide access to information types such as conference papers, book chapters, review articles, trade magazines, and more. BrowZine can also be used to explore e-journal titles in your subject.
While most of our collection is now available digitally, some titles may only be accessible in print. You can find these journal titles using an ‘everything except articles’ search in Library Search.
You’ll also find links to essential reading for your programme in your module reading lists on Canvas.
Key Databases and E-journal Collections
Databases will either provide you with the full text of the journal or they will give you the bibliographic details of an article. Where full text is not available, look for the
link and follow this to see if we have the full text available via Library Search.
Subject databases
Subject databases are tailored to particular subject areas. They tend to use precise terminology relating to the subject area, making searches more accurate, and can include subject specific tools and features.
- Bibliography of Asian Studies (Association for Asian Studies) This link opens in a new windowThis online version of the Bibliography of Asian Studies contains 860,000 records on all subjects pertaining to East, Southeast and South Asia, published worldwide from 1971 to the present.
- British Union of Fascists: Newspapers and Secret Files 1933-1951 This link opens in a new windowThis collection charts the rise and fall of fascism in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s, with a particular focus on Oswald Mosley’s blackshirt movement. The bulk of the documents are official BUF publications, including Fascist Week¸ The Blackshirt, The East London Pioneer, and Action. In addition, there are hundreds of Government documents relating to Mosley’s internment during the Second World War, including Cabinet Office, Home Office and Prime Ministerial papers.
- Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports This link opens in a new windowThese reports were the United States' principal record of political and historical intelligence for 70 years. They include translated broadcast transcripts, newspaper reports, and government statements, and cover many regions of the world from 1974-199
- Parliamentary Labour Party Papers 1968-1994 This link opens in a new windowIncludes minutes of the Party Meetings, the Liaison Committee and the Parliamentary Committee (Shadow Cabinet)
- Political Data Yearbook This link opens in a new windowThe yearbook collects election results, national referenda, changes in government, and institutional reforms in 36 countries including all of the EU member states. Users can select to view different types of data in graphical format, customize by adjusting time settings or selecting parties to view, and download full datasets (with footnotes) for use in research.
Multidisciplinary databases
Much like Library Search, multidisciplinary databases cover a wide range of topics and are a great place to scope your search, or to use if your topic covers more than one subject area.
- British Periodicals Online This link opens in a new windowAccess to the full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late 17th to the early 20th century, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the social sciences, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.
- CNKI China Academic Journals This link opens in a new windowSearchable database providing full-text access to approximately 2.8 million articles in journals in the Social Sciences and Humanities subject areas. Subscription covers F (Literature, History, Philosophy), G (Economics, Politics, Law), H (Education, Social Sciences) and J (Economics/Management)
- Oxford University Press Journals This link opens in a new windowSearch journals published by Oxford University Press for a variety of subject areas.
- Science Direct This link opens in a new windowScienceDirect provides full text-access to journal articles published by Elsevier.
- ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection This link opens in a new windowThis collection provides access to databases covering the international literature in the social sciences, including politics, sociology, social services, anthropology, criminology and education. Together, they provide abstracts, indexing and full text coverage of journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, working papers and more. You can search across the whole collection or choose a specific database to retrieve information. Use the thesauri within the databases to identify alternative keywords.
- Scopus This link opens in a new windowScopus is a large, multidisciplinary database, which indexes peer reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters, conference proceedings and trade publications. It provides cited reference searching, so you can navigate forward and backward through the literature to uncover all the information relevant to your research and set up citation alerts. Other useful tools include citation overviews, author and affiliation searching, visual analysis of search results and a journal analyser and author identifier tools (if you are interested in publishing work).
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowWeb of Science is a multidisciplinary database, which indexes scholarly journal articles, books, book chapters and conference proceedings. It provides cited reference searching, so you can navigate forward and backward through the literature to uncover all the information relevant to your research. Use citation reports to see citation activity and geographical trends and the ‘analyse results’ tool to identify trends and publication patterns.
Support and services
Explore further tools, guides and support from the Library.
