All guides: Law and Justice: Journal articles

Journals

Journal articles can provide you with more recent information than books and will usually examine a topic in detail. Journal articles can alert you to major cases and legislation as well as provide analysis and opinion and can be useful for supporting your research of primary materials. Journal articles can also be used for historical research to determine what was being discussed about a particular issue at a given point in time. Articles about cases, or case notes, are generally shorter than scholarly articles, and can help by providing analysis of the key aspects of a case. Find Journal Articles

Before you begin searching:

Define your topic or research question
What are the key concepts?
Compile a list of keywords and synonyms

In addition to LibrarySearch, the following databases contain journal articles:

AGIS Plus Text (Informit)
Indexing, abstracting and full text database that provides access to published material on all aspects of law. Source documents from Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific law journals and select articles from major law journals from U.S., Canada and U.K.
Westlaw AU
From the Secondary Sources homepage, select By Type: Reviews and Journals to browse or search the Australian Legal Journals Index (ALJI) and the Australian legal journals published by Thomson Reuters.
Lexis Advance Pacific
Browse or search the Australian legal journals published by LexisNexis as Publications or Secondary Materials.
HeinOnline
Full-text and abstracting database of legal journals covering a range of legal topics and jurisdictions, including a number of prominent Australian law journals.
AustLII: Australasian Legal Information Institute
Browse or search a range of Australian and New Zealand law journals and reviews, coverage dates vary. Go to Advanced search -- All journals databases

HeinOnline
Full-text and abstracting database of legal journals covering a range of legal topics and jurisdictions, including the U.S. Also contains an Index to foreign legal periodicals.
Thomson Reuters Westlaw
Westlaw is a collection of full-text UK, US, Canadian, European and other international legal material. Some Australian material is included. Journals, law reports, law reviews, legislation and case law are covered.
Westlaw UK
Westlaw UK gives you access to vast but easily searchable databases of case law, legislation, news, legal journals, commentary, current awareness alerts and EU legal materials.

The Law Review Commons
Search or browse the collection of Open Access law reviews and legal journals from the U.S.. Contains both current and archival content spanning over 100 years.

Finding the full text of a journal article

When you have a reference to a journal article, you need to find the title of the journal that the article is in and then search the RMIT Library to see if it is held online or in print.

Follow the steps below:

Make a note of the full citation (volume, title, page, year) eg. 33 Fed. L. Rev. 391 (2005)
Find the journal title abbreviation in one of the abbreviations lists (see below) ie. Fed. L. Rev is the Federal Law Review
To find if it is available search Journals by journal title
For online journals, select the database that covers the date range you require
Browse or search for your article
For print journals, make note of its location and its call number