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Biosciences: Journal Articles

Why use journals?

From the First Year to the Final Year of your degree, your module lecturers will want to see that you have talked about research in journal articles in your assessments.

Journal articles are usually:

  • first hand reports of original research, making them primary source material
  • the first place where new research is published, so they are at the cutting edge of your subject
  • peer-reviewed, meaning that the articles have been critically evaluated by experts in the field before publication.

Where to start

You will be able to search across journal articles on a topic by using Library Search, and this may be most appropriate for you if you need to obtain a few full-text journal articles on a particular subject.

You can also use the Advance Search to run a more in depth search of articles. Ask your Information Specialist for support on how to do this. 

 

How to find a journal article from a reference

The reference for a journal article usually looks something like this:

Author(s), (Year in brackets). Article title. Journal title in italics, Volume number (Issue number in brackets), Page numbers.

For example:
Clough, H., & Closier, A. (2018). Walking the talk: Using digital media to develop distance learners’ digital citizenship at the Open University (UK). Reference Librarian, Vol 59 (3), pp 129-133.

There are two main ways to find the full text of a journal article from a reference:

  • Type the article title into the Library Search (or your database of choice), and use Find it @ Aston button to access full text
  • Search for the journal title in the A-Z list of journals (link below)

 

When you find an article you would like to use in your piece of the work, the reference details can be found in the following way:

Recent journal articles published in Biology

The following journal articles have been published recently in this subject area.  If you would like to be alerted to journal articles in your specific area of interest as they are published, see the Keeping Up To Date tab.

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Accessing journal articles not available via our subscriptions

Open Access LogoMany journal articles are now freely available online as they have been published "open access" in addition to their publication in a subscription journal.

You can use the following search tools to find open access journal articles:

If the item you would like to read is not available via Aston University Library, you can request the item from another Library.  This is called Inter-library Loan.  This service is available to all University students and staff. 

Aston University is a member of the SCONUL Access reciprocal scheme which allows members to visit and use University libraries in the UK and Ireland.  You are eligible to join the scheme if you are

  • academic staff
  • full-time postgraduate / postgraduate research student,
  • part-time studentSCONUL Logo
  • distance learner
  • placement student

 

Full Time Undergraduate students are not eligible for SCONUL Access membership, but may be able to use other libraries on a reference only basis under the SCONUL Vacation Access scheme.