Atif Sarwar PTE Library Assessment Page 1 of 5

Personal and Team Effectiveness - Library session 2

How to find Journal Articles

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, you should be able to:
 Recognise what a journal article reference look like
 Select an Online Databases relevant to your topic
 Search for useful journal articles

Journals will provide the most up to date information on your topic. Journals may also
provide you with specific information on a topic that you may not be able to find in books.

1.

What is a journal?

Journals (sometimes called magazines, periodicals or serials) are collections of articles.

They are normally published at regular intervals during the year. They can be:
 Daily
 Weekly
 Monthly
 Quarterly (4 times a year)
 Annual (once a year)

L&IS currently subscribes to many thousands of journals - most are available electronically.

Many journal articles will have a short ‘abstract’ (a summary) at the beginning. You can
quickly get an idea of what the article is about by reading the abstract.

Business Information Team November 2010

 Atif Sarwar PTE Library Assessment Page 2 of 5

Understanding a journal reference

Journals are collected into numbered volumes, usually one for each year. To find a
particular journal article you would need to know the full reference, which usually includes:
 the title of the journal, the year it was published and its volume number
 the name and initials of the article’s author
 the title of the article

A journal article reference will usually look something like this:

Authors of article, surname and Date of publication

first letters of forenames
Title of article

Senecal, C., Koestner, R. & Vallerand, R.J. (1995) Self-regulation and academic
procrastination. Journal of Social Psychology, 135 (5), 607-619.

Title of journal that contains Volume number and in Page numbers in the
brackets issue number of issue of the journal
the article (usually journal

underlined or in italics)

Use the Journal Finder section on the Library home-page to locate a journal (you will have
to scroll down the page to find this).

Finding journal articles on a topic

When you need to find journal articles on a particular topic you need to use an online
database.
Online databases can be accessed via the L&IS website using E-resources via Search It.

Some databases provide the full text of complete journal articles, which you could then
print out or save. However, some only provide abstracts (summaries).

While some online databases only index journal articles, many cover other materials as well
e.g. conference papers, chapters of books, reports etc. Not all online databases cover
journal articles; for example, you will find online databases that specialise in images.

Business Information Team November 2010

Atif Sarwar PTE Library Assessment Page 3 of 5

When you are using Search It, you can choose to enter any of the databases simply by
clicking on the name of the database.

Task: Choosing Online Databases

1. Go the Library website (http://lis.tees.ac.uk) and click on E-resources via Search it)
2. Click on Databases by Subject. Choose Business from the pull-down menu under
Subject, and then choose your topic area e.g. Business. You will see a list of relevant
databases in the box on the right. Click on the button to get more information
about the database.

Clicking on Business
Source Premier would
take you to this database.

To learn how to use Business Source

Premier – click on the i button.
From the box that pops up follow the
link to a Factsheet or the How to
Access link.

Try to identify 3 online databases that look like they would be worth searching. Jot down
the reasons for your choice. There are no right or wrong answers but once you start to
search the online databases you may find some cover your topic better than others.

Database 1: Business Source Premier

Why – The Reason why I chose business source premier is because this database contains a
large amount of journals and most of them are available in full text and some are also peer
reviewed so they have been checked over by a second person. There are also company and
industry profiles which I could use to see what other organisations have done and research
into organisations and this would be extremely helpful and useful towards my topic.

Database 2: Emerald Management

Why – The reason why I chose emerald management was because it contains high quality
full text journals covering the business management area and will be useful to cover my
topic. As they are high quality and full text they can be trusted and relied on that the
information that they contain will be more accurate and correct.

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Atif Sarwar PTE Library Assessment Page 4 of 5

Database 3: IDS HR Case Study Library

Why – This database contains case studies on how businesses develop and use their HR
policies and practices. This sort of information can be really useful as I can compare and see
what other organisations have done and what the outcome was from their decisions and
actions. This can be used to cover my topic to show what can be done and how it should be
done.

Searching online databases

The only way to become really comfortable with searching online databases is to practise.
To help get you started there is a range of Factsheets from the L&IS website. There are also
tutorials for some of the online databases that you can access through the L&IS website.

To learn how to use a database – click on the next to its name. From the box that pops up
follow the link to a Factsheet or the How to Access link to find a tutorial.

Task: Searching Online Databases

Now choose one of the online databases from your list and find out how to search it by
looking at the Factsheet or by doing the Tutorial

Once you feel comfortable using your chosen online database, have a go at searching it
using the keywords you have chosen for your topic.

How useful were these online databases for your subject area?
The online databases were very useful and easy to use to find the journals. As I found
using the databases easy I found many journals that covered my subject area.

I firstly chose to search through the business source premier database. I began my search
by using the advance search option, i typed in the keywords that i has chosen and
searched through the titles. That managed to bring up a few journals but there were not
accurate enough so i refined my search a bit more so that I could find journals that were
more related to my topic.

I then searched through the Emerald database. I found straight away found journals that
were useful for my subject of team strengths and team management. I firstly searched
with using my keyword which was team building and had a limitation of only searching
through the titles, I had relevant 34 results. I then decided to put another limitation on
my search by selecting that the journals could only be a maximum of 4 year old, which
worked but only 3 results.

Overall I found that the Emerald database was much easier to use and had a lot of
Business
relevantInformation Team
journals that covered my topic of team strengths and building. November 2010
Atif Sarwar PTE Library Assessment Page 5 of 5

Some tips for searching online databases

 If the database does not provide the full text of the article, click on the blue
button to see if it is available electronically from another source.
 Use the Help screens; a few seconds looking at these can save you loads of time later.
If you find nothing on your subject - ask for help. Your tutor and the librarians for your
subject area may be able to suggest alternative sources that you hadn’t thought of.

Business Information Team November 2010