Journal articles & databases - SCU College - Diploma Courses - Library guides at Southern Cross University

Subject specific databases

Australian Public Affairs Full text (APA-FT) (InfoRMIT)
Collection of Australian Public Affairs resources including journals, magazines, multi-media sources, books, reports and conference material.
Current Contents Connect
Current Content Connect provides access to scholarly journals across science, social science, technology, and the arts and humanities. It includes complete bibliographic data, abstracts, reviews, editorials, corrections, and conference proceedings.
Humanities international Complete (EBSCO)

Humanities International Complete offers access to full-text journals for humanities research worldwide. It includes all data from Humanities International Index plus unique full-text content.
For help with the EBSCOhost platform, see the Quick start guide.
JSTOR - Arts and Sciences
Academic journal articles, images, reviews, books, research reports and miscellaneous content covering 75 disciplines in arts and science.

Standards Australia
Standards Australia maintains over 6,000 Australian Standard® brand standards and associated publications, all available in a variety of formats.
Note: Southern Cross University recommends reading standards online where available. Changes to the Digital Rights Management (DRM) method (as of October 2023) require changes to the security settings within Adobe Reader. Southern Cross University strongly recommends you DO NOT make the suggested changes due to the potential impact upon all documents used by, and activity within, Adobe Reader. SCU recommends reading the standards online. For standards that are only available for download, click the download button. More information can be found here on the vendor's website.

Health Collection (InfoRMIT)
Features comprehensive coverage of key disciplines across all aspects relevant to nursing, general health, specialist and allied health.

Searching Ulrichs

Journal articles: peer reviewed or scholarly?

Your lecturer may require you to find peer-reviewed journal articles. Here are some tips on finding out if your journal is a peer-reviewed journal:

There are 4 ways to check for peer-reviewed status:

does the database allow you to restrict your search to peer reviewed publications (like Ebsco)
does the database offer a way to check by clicking the journal title, or a browse title link (like APA-FT)
search a specialised database such as Ulrichsweb or Serials Directory for the journal title. In Ulrichsweb you are hoping to see a little black and white striped referee shirt , in Serials Directory you are hoping for a statement: "Peer Reviewed: Yes". See the video on how to search Ulrichsweb on this site.
search the web for the home page of the journal. Look for an information for authors/contributors page. Does it tell authors that their work will be subject to a peer-reviewed process.

Also remember to check that your article is scholarly and not just an opinion or commentary piece that happens to be in a peer-reviewed publication. Some good indicators:

the author gives their academic qualifications/affiliations with a university
often there is an abstract
substantial document - longer than 2 pages
list of references at the end.