Skip to Main Content

Library Resources: Journals & Databases

Find It

Start your research here! Find It searches across a huge range of library resources including databases, e-journals and e-books, and contains full-text articles for students and staff.

Off-campus access: Institutional login required (HSU username and password).

If you find an article you would like to use in your work but can't find access to it, scroll down to the Inter-Library Loan box below to find out how to make a request. 

Available Databases

Journals A-Z

What are journals?

Journals are regular scholarly publications that contain articles on specific subjects.

They are important in academic research for a number of reasons:

  • they are the main way in which research is published
  • they can explore a narrow topic in depth
  • they contain current or recent research findings
  • they are often peer-reviewed so that research findings are checked by other subject experts
     
  • often the author of a journal article will have carried out some primary research; perhaps a case study where they have interviewed or surveyed participants, or a clinical trial. The purpose of the article is for the authors to outline their research and present their findings and conclusions
     
  • This in-depth information is not likely to be found in books and this is why journal articles are important in finding supporting evidence for assignments.

Inter-Library Loans

The Inter-Library Loan service enables you to borrow items (or to receive copies of items) which are not held in our stock. Student are given an allowance of 5 items per academic year. Teaching staff are not charged for Inter-Library Loans. 

Inter-Library Loan charges are subsidised at £5.00 per article or book chapter. In stock articles/chapters can be photocopied for distance-learning students at 5p per (black/white) sheet copied plus £1.00 per article/chapter.

Please submit requests for journal articles or book chapters by completing an Inter-Library Loan request form.

For queries, please contact Learning Services.

Sources of free journals

Open Access journals from PubMed Central, BioMed Central and EBSCO Open Access are available via our Journals A-Z list. You can also search the websites below for free access to the full-text of medical journals. Sometimes they provide a mixture of free and subscription only access; and there may be restricted access to the most recent issues:
 

Directory of Open Access Journals
This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.



As a useful addition to the most effective ways of finding full-text listed above, you can also use Google Scholar. We have uploaded our electronic journal holdings information to Google, so when you search by article title you will be alerted if Library & Learning Services has those electronic articles in stock. This is a quick way of finding full-text articles, it’s not 100% reliable but if you are in a rush to find some full-text articles this may help.

Google Scholar will find Library & Learning Services full-text articles automatically on campus. Please ask us for details if you would like to set this up for off-campus use.

Databases A-Z

What are Databases?

Databases give you online access to valuable information including full-text journal articles, abstracts, newspaper articles, guidelines, images and more. Some provide access to full-text articles, whilst others only provide abstract and citation information.

Why use databases?
Learning Services subscribes to most of these databases on behalf of our students and staff. Using them will help you find reliable information from trusted sources that are not freely available on the Internet.

Basic searching with EBSCO tutorial