Journal articles are key sources for current, focused, and peer-reviewed research. They’re typically written by scholars and experts and published in academic journals, making them reliable and credible.
As a researcher, journal articles can help you:
Unlike books, which often provide broad overviews, journal articles zoom in on particular questions or experiments. They’re especially useful when you need data, analysis, or scholarly perspectives to back up your thesis or research question.
Peer-Reviewed: A peer-reviewed journal article is a scholarly piece of writing that has been carefully evaluated by other experts in the same field—called "peers"—to check the quality of the research, the accuracy of the findings, and the clarity of the writing before it gets published, helping ensure that the information is trustworthy and meets academic standards. Please note that all peer-reviewed articles are journal articles, but not all journal articles are peer-reviewed.
LibKey Nomad is a browser extension that gives you one-click access to full-text articles when you're researching outside the library website. It also connects with BrowZine, a tool that lets you browse academic journals by subject and read current issues in a clean, user-friendly format.
To learn more or get started, visit the Third Iron guide.
Pro tip: Know the name of the journal you want to search in? Use the Publication Finder.
Using a search tool like Discovery (the main search box on the library homepage) is like using a search engine that looks across many databases, the library catalogue, and other resources all at once. It's a great place to start searching because it offers a simple, all-in-one search box that pulls results from many databases and collections at once, making it easy to explore a wide range of sources and get a general sense of what’s available on a topic.
Check out our Searching Discovery guide to level up your research skills and learn how to get the most out of the library’s search tools.
Pro tip: Looking for peer-reviewed articles? Discovery has a filter for that! Enter your search terms and then select the Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals button below the search box. You can also see them identified by the peer-reviewed label in your search results list. 
To find journal articles in Discovery follow the steps below or watch the short demonstration video.
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Library database: A library database is a searchable collection of academic resources like journal articles, eBooks, and reports which are organized by subject or discipline and provided by different vendors or publishers.
Searching an individual database lets you focus on a specific subject area or type of resource (like psychology journals or historical newspapers), giving you more precise and relevant results for your topic.
Visit the Database A–Z List to explore all our collections. Most databases include academic journals. To focus your search, look for a filter or option labelled “academic journals” or “journal articles” in the database you are using.
Pro tip: Because individual databases are built by different companies, their search tools and filters vary but they’re usually more powerful than those in the Discovery search, helping you narrow your results and find more relevant sources.