Ways to Find Journal Articles
Ways to Find Journal Articles
1. Use Library Databases
The Library subscribes to many databases that have or link to scholarly articles
♦ Multidisciplinary databases, such as Academic Search Ultimate and Web of Science Core Collection
These index articles in scholarly journals as well as other types of publications.
You can limit your search results to only journal articles.
♦ Discipline-specific databases, such as CAB Abstracts, CINAHL, FSTA, Education Research Complete,
PubMed, BIOSIS, and SciFinder-n, take broader views of scholarly/professional literature
and also index publications types such as dissertations, books and book chapters, conference proceedings,
and technical reports.
Most of these databases will allow you to limit your search results to only scholarly journals.
2. Use Google Scholar
♦ Find a variety of publication types including scholarly journal articles.
♦ Does not have a way to limit results to only scholarly journals, so pay attention to what you have retrieved.
3. Follow the Citation Paths from a Known Item
Did you have a highly relevant article that answers part of your research question? Use that to find other references.
♦ Look backwards in the literature by looking up references from a publication's works cited section.
♦ Look forward in the literature by seeing who cited an item.
Web of Science databases, Google Scholar, and some other databases and publisher websites give you Cited By references
(the ones they see in their own universes) so you can identify more recent articles that cited the one you like.
Don't let paywalls get between you and an article
Follow 
to locate material in databases.
- AgEcon Search: Research in Agricultural and Applied EconomicsOpen access repository of full-text scholarly literature in agricultural and applied economics. Includes working papers, conference papers, and journal articles.
- Business Source Ultimate [Ebsco]All areas of business, including marketing, in scholarly journals, trade publications, and magazines.
- You can limit your search to scholarly journals
- ABI/Inform Global [ProQuest]Business conditions, management techniques, business trends, management practice and theory, corporate strategy and tactics, and competitive landscape.
- Agricola [EBSCO]Covers material acquired by the National Agricultural Library (NAL) and cooperating institutions in the agricultural and related sciences. Citations are primarily to journal articles and books, but include other type of resources.
- Limit your search results to academic journals
- Web of Science (WOS)Multidisciplinary & very current.
Citations from ~8,500 of the most prestigious, high impact research journals in the world.
Also provides cited reference searching: navigate forward and backward through the literature from a specific article. - A-Z DatabasesAll databases provided by Fresno State Library. Use the subject filter to narrow the list to those that directly support your discipline.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is best if you are trying to find a known item (i.e. you have a citation and are trying to find the article). It provides easy access to peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Also includes patents.
How do I get the article without paying?
If Google Scholar's links don't get you to the article text or you are asked to pay for the article, use the Find It @ Fresno State link (below). It will connect to our e-subscriptions, catalog, and our Interlibrary Loan form.
If the Find It @ Fresno State link does not appear, click on the 
double arrow on the end of the last row of the reference entry.
- Google Scholar (with Fresno State Library access links)Use this link to set up your Google Scholar to always provide Fresno State Library access links. Don't pay for articles! That's the library's job.