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 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 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 the e-journals collection of the Library for a particular journal and / or article where details are known.
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 (a) from the 'Search' tab, choose either of two collections: Index to South African Periodicals (ISAP) (just an index 1987+) or SA and African Electronic Journals (full text). (b) to search multiple collections at once, choose the 'Search all' tab from the toolbar, 'unselect all' and then tick in the boxes next to the wanted collections.
Full text articles from South African newspapers are available from SA Media on Sabinet.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS AND ARTICLES
Click on the Databases tab at the top of this page for links to databases containing international journals for more
Some key Biological sciences journals in print and online:
African Entomology (online, also in print at Life Sciences and Westville)
Annual Review of Entomology (online from 2011, also in print at Life Sciences and Westville)
BioScience (online from 1992 via Ebscohost, also available in print at Life Sciences)
BioScience (online from 1964 - 2009 via Jstor)
Cell (online, also available in print at Life Sciences and Westville)
Conservation biology (online, also in print at Life Sciences)
Frontiers in Zoology (online only)
Journal of Animal Ecology (online and in print at Life Sciences and Westville)
Mammal Review (online and also available in print at Life Sciences)
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.
Not sure of the correct format of a journal title or its abbreviations or how to cite it?