Articles

Journals (sometimes referred to as periodicals) are an excellent source of current developments, research and information in a particular subject area. Most journals use the word 'journal' in their title but legal journals often also use the description review or bulletin instead eg. The Sydney Law Review, The Internet Law Bulletin.

The library subscribes to a large number of print and electronic journals. Articles in journals, bulletins, newsletters and magazines can all be accessed via the library's law databases.

Key databases include:

A citation is the information used to identify a journal article. Typically it includes the author(s) name, article title, year of publication, volume number, issue number, journal title (in italics), and the page number the article starts on or a page range. 

A typical law journal article citation:

Often a law journal's title is written in abbreviated form, eg. JCL instead of Journal of Contract Law. Use any of the following legal abbreviation guides to find the full title:  

• CaseBase Abbreviations - look up abbreviations in the alphabetical list
• Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations - search by abbreviation
• Monash Unversity - Abbreviations of Legal Publications - look up abbreviations in the alphabetical list

If no full-text of an article is available in a database (or if you have a citation from elsewhere), use the 'Journal Title' option in the catalogue to find it in another database, or in print. When searching for a journal in the library catalogue, search for the journal's full title, NOT the article title.

1. Enter the journal, bulletin or newsletter title (not the article title)
2. Navigate to the full-text based on the links in the journal's catalogue record

e.g. Database link > Journal title > Year > Volume # > Issue # > Article title > Full-text