Journals are regular (serial) publications, like magazines, that publish the outcome of original research and are aimed at other researchers or scholars. They can focus on a narrow field of study.
Journal articles often cover quite narrow topics within a field. They record the state of the art so will keep up to date with the latest concepts, findings, or trends, scholarly analysis or research. You can find articles using Library Search. Select the Articles search mode.
Journal articles undergo peer-review, which is a process of review by experts in the field (peers). It is aimed at validating the research prior to publication of an article, ensuring quality, originality, contribution to the knowledge base, and authority in a research article.
Journals and journal articles can be found using Library Search, however it does not discover content on all economics databases, so journal or bibliographic databases are preferred for literature searching.
Journal databases index and abstract articles in specific journals. Some are general and index journals across a range of disciplines, and others are subject specific and index only medical journals (or another discipline).
Journal databases are not always full-text: some will include the full-text article, but others will provide an abstract (summary) only. If journal articles are not available, use the Library's free Get it for Me service.
Some journal databases provide citation information, which allows researcher to measure the usage and impact of articles in their research field, and to find related academic literature. Citation databases can be useful, but they are general in scope.
Finding the full text of articles can be very frustrating and time consuming. The following tools can help to make the process a bit easier!
WebBridge is a tool that helps you find and access full-text journal articles. If the full-text article is not available in your search engine, click on the WebBridge icon to see if it is available from another library database.
Google Scholar is an academic search engine which indexes books, journal articles, and other scholarly materials. It is multidisciplinary, with a good coverage of economics, although with some US bias. It includes links to full-text documents including open access materials. To improve access, set Library Links to University of Warwick in the Settings. Google Scholar also includes citation information and allows you to find related literature.
Library Proxy Tool: if you go directly to a journal homepage, you may not be recognised as a Warwick person, even when you are on campus. Install the Library Proxy Tool to your browser toolbar. If you hit a paywall, click on the Try Warwick Library Proxy button and if we have access, you should get through to the full text.
If all of the above options fail to find the full text, you can make a free Get it For Me request and we will try to get a copy for you.