What are academic journals?
Academic journals are periodicals dedicated to publishing the latest research in a particular subject area. Like magazines, they are published at regular intervals e.g., monthly or quarterly. Unlike magazines, articles published in academic journals are often reviewed by other experts in the field to ensure a high level of academic rigour. This is called peer review. Peer-reviewed articles are good sources of evidence for your assignments so look out for the purple 'peer-reviewed' icon in Library Search results.
If you're looking for articles, the best place to start is Library Search as it can search most of our online journal collections simultaneously. Select 'online articles' from the menu in the search bar and enter your keywords or the article title if you're looking up a specific reference. If you want to browse a particular journal, just click the 'Browse e-Journals' button at the top of Library Search.
We have access to thousands of journals, including some in print. So if you need any help finding journals or articles, use the chat widget in Library Search or contact your Subject Librarian.
Searching for journal articles using Library Search
The easiest way to find journal articles your subject is to use Library Search. This will search across most of our journals and database collections. Enter a few words or phrases into the main search bar, e.g. 'Malinowski and Trobriand Islands' and you'll receive a set of results, which can be refined by various criteria, e.g. topic, creator, etc. You should be able to access the full text of any article in your search results. Click on the title and follow the link to the online resource under View Online in the pop up window.
If you are on-campus, the content provider should know that you are a Goldsmiths user and provide access easily. If you are off-campus, you will need to sign-in as a Goldsmiths user. You might be deliberately prompted to sign-in, but if not, look for a sign-in option (usually at the top of the page). You will probably see a range of choices - look for either Institutional or Shibboleth log-in. You might then need to choose your region/university - after which you can enter your username and password to access the full-text.
Some journals may only be available in print - journals with a classmark between 000-699 are on the first floor. Journals with a classmark of 700- are on the second floor. These cannot be borrowed, but articles can be photocopied.
Senate House also subscribes to many journals that we don't have subscriptions to. Register in person and ask for access to electronic resources. Once registered, you can use all their electronic journals off-campus.
Searching for articles using Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a search engine that indexes either the metadata or the full text of tens of millions of monographs, journal articles, conference papers and more. Approximately 80-90% of all articles written in the English language are indexed in Google Scholar. It supplements what is available to you through the libraries you have access to, such as Goldsmiths College and Senate House.
You can search Google Scholar like you would search any database; through a combination of keywords or words from titles or authors. Google Scholar automatically sorts by relevance, but using the filters you can change this to be sorted by date. Because of the vast number of monographs, articles and more in the database, searches would need to be quite specific. The more keywords you add, the fewer the number of results you’ll be given.
If you are on campus, Google Scholar should recognise you as a Goldsmiths student and provide full text access to articles from journals we subscribe to. If not, you can ask Google Scholar to connect to our journals.
Find the Google Scholar menu button, which looks like this: 
Click on it and choose Settings. Then click on Library Links on the left. If they are unticked, search for Goldsmiths and/or Senate House and select these libraries. Tick the box to the left of it and save.
Google Scholar will re-run the last search and show which content is available from Senate House. Or start a new search and this will be reflected in the results.
Understanding a Journal Article Reference
In Harvard referencing style, a journal article reference will look like this:
Gill, H. (2021) ‘Decolonizing Visual Anthropology: Locating Transnational Diasporic Queers‐of‐Color Voices in Ethnographic Cinema’, American Anthropologist, 123(1), pp. 36–49. Available at:10.1111/aman.13510.
The journal title, year of publication and volume and issue numbers (highlighed above) will be particularly useful in helping you find and access the journal. Find out more about referencing here.
