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.
Not all journals or articles are available as full text online. There are various ways to access online journals - see the centre column of this page or click on the Databases tab.
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. The Library does not have full text access to every journal that exists.
There are different ways to search for journals and journal articles:
1. Search by articles, journal title or journal collections. Click on the eJournals/Articles tab at the top of this page for more information and a list of journals, OR, from the toolbar on the UKZN Library homepage, under WorldCat Local, select eJournals/Articles and choose the required option.
2. Journals and articles can also be accessed via using Databases as well as via the ICatalogue by using keywords or the journal title.
3. Search GoogleScholar. GoogleScholar 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.
FINDING SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNALS AND ARTICLES
SABINET Online provides a listing of all journals and journal articles published in South Africa in ALL subject areas.
Click on SABINET ONLINE and tick in the boxes next to the two journal collections ISAP (just an index 1987+) and SA ePublications (full text since 2001). Click on Select at the bottom of the page to get to the search screen.
SciELO (Scientific electronic library online) is "South Africa’s premier open-access (free to access and free to publish) searchable full-text journal database in service of the South African research community. The database covers a selected collection of peer-reviewed South African scholarly journals"
CORE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL COLLECTIONS
Click on the Databases tab at the top of this page for links to databases containing international journals
Geology:
Other:
The Department of Higher Education approves South African journals for SAPSE accreditation purposes and also provides links to all accredited lists. These are available from the UKN Research office home page.