SCL3003 Corrective Exercise Prescription and Injury Management: Databases & Journals

Databases versus journals

What are articles?

  • An author writes an article on a particular topic and sends it to a journal publisher.
  • Articles on similar topics are published together in journals, which can also be known as periodicals or serials.
  • The journal publisher assesses the article. It may be reviewed by other writers in the field. This would then be a peer reviewed article.

How do we access the articles?

  • The library subscribes to print copies of journals and puts them onto the library shelves.
  • The library subscribes to online databases which are collections of journals packaged together by topic. These databases can be searched using keywords, author names and subjects.
  • A search in the ‘Library Search’ accesses many journal articles in the databases.

What is peer review?

Scholarly or Academic Journal and Databases from Victoria University Library on Vimeo.

When an article is published in a peer-reviewed or refereed journal, it indicates that the article has been through a formal review process. It has been read an evaluated by experts in the subject field before being accepted for publication. This ensures the information in the article is well-researched, and contributes to the knowledge of the subject area.

How to find peer-reviewed journal articles through library search

How to find a journal article using Library Search from Victoria University Library on Vimeo.

Database access to peer-reviewed journal articles

Rather than searching ALL the library resources you can choose to search in ONE of the databases. Remember to limit your search results to peer-reviewed (or refereed) articles and also to Original Articles (if there is an option).

  • ScienceDirect - full text access to sport sciences, therapy and medicine journals. Limit your search to Articles.

              

In ScienceDirect, you can identify Original Research articles from the Results page.

 

  • Ovid - Full text journal articles from Lippincott collection.Limit your search to Full text and Original articles. 

 

  • MedLine - full text access to medical journals. Limit your search to Full text and peer review articles.