Journals are usually published on a regular basis, such as weekly, monthly or quarterly and each issue contains a collection of articles by different authors usually reporting the latest research. You can find all the journals we subscribe to using iFind, the library catalogue. Scopus and Web of Science are large interdisciplinary databases that are useful for finding articles but we may not necessarily subscribe to the content.
Journals will be very important to use during your studies, they will provide you with high quality, reliable and up-to-date information. Using articles in assignments will demonstrate you have read widely on your topic. The main way to search for journal articles on your topic is to use a bibliographic database. A database is simply just an organized collection of information or data. Swansea University pay for access to 100s of high quality databases to help you find the best and most up-to-date information for your research. The main databases we recommend are below but remember each database will have different content so it's best to use more than one database to make sure you get all the information you need!
Take a look at our guides on how to use iFind, the library catalogue to search for books and other resources.
MyUni Library Essentials includes a section on Researching. Follow the link below to learn how to plan a search strategy and conduct your search. (You need to log in to Canvas to access the link.)
Please follow the link to self-enrol on MyUni Library Essentials if you have not accessed the course before.
Both these resources are ‘abstract and citation’ databases – this means they have lots of information about journal articles and other publications. They are useful for finding articles, and also for tracking citations and other metrics.
APA PsycARTICLES is a database from the American Psychological Society giving full text access to over 100 journals in behavioural science and related fields.
APA PsycINFO provides coverage of behavioral science and mental health fields, containing nearly 4 million citations from 2500 journal titles. PsycINFO is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health, with ninety-nine percent of the covered material peer-reviewed.
Google Scholar searches for scholarly materials. It is unclear what is indexed and how, so Google Scholar should be used in conjunction with other academic databases for more reliable results. It is important to note that Google Scholar links to some subscribed content. You can enable this feature on your device by going to the Google Menu, Settings, Library links and then selecting Swansea University from the access links for list.
Semantic Scholar is an artificial-intelligence backed search engine for academic publications including peer-reviewed research. It is useful to use alongside Google Scholar as it uses AI to extract meaning from research literature. To get started, visit semanticscholar.org and search for a paper, author, topic, or keyword. You can filter by field, date range, conference, and more to refine the search results as well as sort by relevance or recency.
Skip the paywall and search CORE for free, legal, full-text articles.
From economics and politics to literature and philosophy, Oxford Handbooks covers a wide range of subjects across the humanities, social sciences, sciences, and law.
Many of our journals are available online, both on campus and from elsewhere using your Swansea University username and password. The documents below should help with common problems but if you still can't get into something which you think we subscribe to please let us know.