A journal (periodical) is a scholarly publication containing articles written by researchers, academics, practitioners and other experts. Journals usually focus on a specific discipline or field of study. Articles in journals often deal with very specific aspects of topics and in depth. If you want a broad overview of your topic, start with a text book. Journals are like magazines: different issues or parts are published at regular intervals and each has the same title. Often each part has a number and all the parts for a year have a volume number. Usually several authors write articles per issue.
Most academic journals are not freely available via Google or Google Scholar. Libraries pay for access and publishers / vendors put together collections of journals for multiple years in databases. These collections may be country or subject specific or multidisciplinary.
There are different ways to search for journals and journal articles:
1. Search an academic database by topic, author or journal title. Click on the Databases tab at the top of this page for more information and a list of databases, OR, from the toolbar on the UKZN Library homepage, under Electronic Resources, select Databases A-Z and choose the required option.
2. Search Google Scholar. Google Scholar can only provide free access to articles if publishers allow it but where UKZN pays for access to an article, click on the article title to get to the full text.