Finding ejournals and articles

If you are not sure what an ejournal or article is, take a look at Understanding ejournals.

There are two main ways of finding ejournal articles:

1. Searching for a specific article or journal when you have the details, such as author or title.
2. Searching across journal collections or within a particular journal title for articles on a subject.

Finding a particular article in an ejournal

To check whether the full text of a specific article is available online:

• Go to Library Search.
• Enter the article title in the search box and click 'Search'.
• You will see one or more links to the article if it is available via the OU Library.
• If the article you are looking for is not in the first few results then refine your search using publication date, resource type etc. For example, if you know the exact title of the journal title, select it from the list of journal titles.
• You may be asked to enter your Open University Computer Username and password before you can go any further.
• If the article is not on the first page of your results, search for the ejournal that the article appears in and then use the publication information, i.e. year, volume and issue number, to navigate to the article. For more detailed instructions, see below.

Finding a particular ejournal title

• Go to Library search.
• Enter the ejournal title in the search box and click 'Search'.
• Be aware that you need to enter the title exactly as it appears, e.g. the Journal of Organizational Dynamics must be spelt with a Z rather than an S.
• Filter your results by limiting the ‘resource type’ to 'Journals'.
• If the ejournal title is available via the OU Library there might be more than one link to it. Each link will say under it which dates are available through that link, so check that the article you are looking for is within that date range. The links will take you to the journal interface where you can navigate to the year, volume and issue number you require.
• You may be asked to enter your Open University Computer Username and password before you can go any further.

Finding articles on a particular topic

You can use Library Search to search all of the Library's resources but this can sometimes give you too many results or results which aren't relevant.  Individual databases are a great place to search for a particular topic as many of them focus on specific disciplines. To find a relevant database to search, try the Selected resources for your study page. A list of useful databases is provided for different disciplines.

For more help with the process of searching, read Finding resources for your assignment. You can also attend online training or watch recordings of previous sessions from the Training and Events page.

You can learn more about databases in the Understanding databases page.