Engineering: Journals

Journals are generally more current than books and more specific in their focus. Many academic journals are peer-reviewed, meaning they are evaluated by other experts in the same field before publication. This makes them a good quality source of academic information.

You can access thousands of journals through the Library, most of these online: we subscribe to over 67,000 journals electronically. 

Journals are short-form academic literature. They are published relatively quickly (compared to books) so are an up-to-date form of academic literature.

Articles present new research findings and generate academic debate in their discipline.

• Journals are vehicles for short-form academic publishing in a discipline
• Issues are collections of articles published periodically in a journal
• Articles are individual essays/papers published in the journal/issue
• Pre-prints are journal articles that are published online early
• Working papers are early versions of articles published without peer review

Articles are generally academic essays, but may also include case studies, commentary or opinion pieces, and book reviews.

Journals are peer reviewed which is a process of academic quality control. Articles are reviewed by other academics (peers) prior to publication to validate research.

Google Scholar 
broadly searches the web for scholarly literature across disciplines and source types: journal articles, theses etc. from publisher websites and institutional repositories.

Find out more on the Library website here.