Computing: About journal articles & databases

A journal is similar to a magazine. Issues are available at regular intervals, such as every month. Often, journals are 'peer-reviewed' or 'scholarly'.

• This means each article goes through an evaluation process to test it's accuracy, credibilty, relevance, and so on.
• Peer-reviewed/scholarly articles are usually of a high academic standard.

Journals contain pieces of writing or research called journal articles.

This website summarises the difference between scholarly journals and popular magazines.

Need access to the full text of a journal article but can't find it in MultiSearch? Make an interlibrary loan request and we'll try to get it from another library for you.

Conferences are a major source of new research in computing.

• At conferences, researchers present papers on the research they are doing and answer questions from the audience.
• The papers presented in the conference are usually published in a collection called conference proceedings.
• It may be months before this research is published as a journal article, if at all.

A library database is simply an online collection of information, such as:

• journal articles
• books chapters
• book reviews
• reports
• conference papers

Sometimes only the abstract of a journal article will be available in a database but often you will be able to read the full text of the article too.

The easiest way to discover journal articles is to search for your keywords in MultiSearch.

• Click on the Login for full access at the top of the MultiSearch homepage.
• Log in using your DkIT network username and password.

You can also search each database individually if you prefer.  See the list of databases in the A-Z database guide below.