Psychology: Journals

Journals are scholarly publications that contain articles written by researchers, professors and other experts in the field. Journals focus on a specific discipline or field of study. Unlike newspapers and magazines, journals are intended for an academic or technical audience, not general readers. They contain the latest research in a field because they don't take a long time to get published (unlike books). All our journals are online and, usually, they are found as part of databases (big online collections of journals).

Most journal articles:

• Are peer reviewed
• Contain original research
• Focus on current developments
• Cite other works and have reference lists

Journals are published on a regular basis (monthly, quarterly, etc.) and are sequentially numbered.

Each copy is an issue; a set of issues makes a volume (usually each year is a separate volume). When you see a reference that looks something like this: 

Author, A. and Author, B. (Year) 'The title of an article', The Title of a Journal of a Specific Subject, 54(2), pp. 123-134

The numbers at the end are telling you what the volume (in the case above, Volume 54) and issue (in the case above, issue 2) numbers are. The pp. stands for 'pages', because many journals still exist in print and you're probably looking at a digital version of it.

Finding journals and articles

To find out what journals and/or articles QMU have access to, you can search or browse our list of E-journals A-Z. If you know which article you want, start by finding the journal it was published in first (in the above list), then follow the link at the bottom of the record that includes the correct year for that journal and find the volume and issue to find the article. Again, you will need to sign in with your QMU details if off campus.

To find articles on a specific topic, the E-journals A-Z is not useful. Instead, you need to use our Discover search engine mainly if you are a Year 1 student. Year 2 students or above are expected to use our  Databases to search for literature on a given topic - please see the Databases - Literature Searching tab in this guide to see a list of databases for your subject and to watch the video tutorials on literature searching. 

If you are on campus or connected via remote access, clicking on an article link should take you to the full text. You may be prompted to log into Shibboleth (the authentication system we use).

If you study at home or you are a distance, online or collaborations student, if you click on a link to an article and you cannot see the full text, look for an option to log in via Shibboleth or via your institution (you may be prompted to search for Queen Margaret University in some cases). These are the only two ways you should log in. Inputting your credentials in any other boxes will not work as those are for individual subscribers only, not institutional subscribers like QMU users.