A journal or periodical is usually published several times throughout the year: monthly, quarterly or twice a year. Usually, all issues from the same year will have the same volume number. Individual journal titles publish articles related to a particular field or subject area. The articles will be related to the broad field of the journal but will be on a specific topic.
Each issue of a journal contains articles written by researchers and practitioners in the field. Some articles can be classified as peer-reviewed which means that they have been assessed for quality, relevancy, and accuracy prior to publication.
You can limit your search in many of the library's databases to scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. Depending on the database you access the article from look for "Peer Reviewed Journals", "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" or "Peer Reviewed" limiter option on the search page. You can also check in the database UlrichsWeb to determine if the journal is indicated as being peer-reviewed.
Below is a selection of peer-reviewed journals. The complete list of e-journal titles provided by the library can be viewed from the Journals Titles list. You can find journal articles online via Library search or via Library databases. A Database is a search engine for journal articles. One database may search hundreds of individual journal titles. Databases often include journals covering a particular subject area.
The majority of journal articles are written in a standard format. In general, the structure follows Abstract, Introduction, Methods or Methodology, Results and Analysis, Discussion, and References. Each section of the article serves its unique purpose. By understanding this structure, you will feel more comfortable working with a scientific article. For more information check the Reading a Scholarly Article content.
For information on referencing journal articles go to the Referencing page of this guide and the Referencing Style Guides on the Library website.
View the videos on this page to learn how to search for journal articles on a topic using LibrarySearch or Library databases.
UlrichsWeb is the authoritative source to go to if you want to find out if a journal is peer reviewed or not.
In UlrichsWeb, type in your journal title. If the journal name has an icon like a little black and white striped referee shirt 
, the journal is peer reviewed.
Google Scholar is a search engine that provides access to full-text articles to which Victoria University subscribes and to articles made freely available by the publisher. Use Advanced Scholar Search options by clicking on the hamburger icon (
) in the upper left corner of the search page.
Fulltext journal articles and research papers can be retrieved by clicking on the "Find Fulltext @ VU Library" link when it appears to the right of your search results. This will happen automatically while on campus but may need to be set up as "Library Links" under Scholar Settings to work from off-site.