This is a typical journal reference following the Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA):
A Ashworth, 'Ignorance of the Criminal Law, and Duties to Avoid it' (2011) 74 MLR 1.
This article was written by A Ashworth (the author) and is about ignorance of the criminal law (the article title). You can find it in the 2011 volume of the journal called Modern Law Review. The volume number is 74, and the article begins at page 1.
Tip: The journal title is often abbreviated in legal referencing. Look up abbreviations using the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations.
Use the Electronic Journals link to find out if the Library has a specific e-journal.
Searching Electronic Journals.
If Ulster University has the Journal online, we will provide:
Law journals range from largely practitioner-focused (magazines, bulletins and newsletters, with short, practice-based articles) to those with detailed research articles (containing analysis and context and considered more "academic"). Try to use mostly "academic" journals in your work.
In addition to the journals in your reading lists, journals which have the words ‘Review’, ‘Journal’, 'Studies' or ‘Quarterly’ in their title are likely to be more academic than those which don’t, but this is not a hard and fast rule. Even within these journals, there will be a hierarchy of quality.
The highest academic standard for a journal is "peer reviewed". Please note: neither Westlaw UK nor HeinOnline can filter their legal journals listings by ‘peer review’. This means that when you are using USearch, which DOES have a peer review/academic filter, never tick the box to limit your results to peer review. If you do, you will eliminate all results from these databases.
There's a useful tool from Washington and Lee School of Law which allows you to view the top journals by country and by subject (General means journals which cover multiple legal subjects). Choose to view only those journals in print format or include those published online as well. Select whether they must be peer-edited or refereed (tick both) and then choose the Ranking Criteria (choose Combined).
The recommended internet search engine for journal articles is Google Scholar. This limits results to higher quality resources.
Want to check if the Library can provide full text? Click Settings and Library links. Search for University of Ulster and save your preferences. That way you will see links to full-text Ulster links from within our e-journal collection in your search results.
However, even though Google Scholar is a very useful source, we recommend you concentrate your legal research on the Library databases such as Westlaw, HeinOnline or Lexis+ UK.
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If the item you want is not available from Ulster sources, the Library's Document Delivery service can request material from the British Library and elsewhere. |
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You may request books and articles using the Online Request Form Article requests will usually be sent to you electronically for download so register for British Library's On Demand service prior to requesting and read the guidance on Secure Electronic Delivery (SED). Book requests will be supplied as loans. There is no charge for either service, although weekly limits may apply. |
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USearch indexes the journal information from multiple databases including HeinOnline and Westlaw UK. Westlaw UK itself indexes the journal content in Lexis+ UK. In addition, USearch also indexes several criminal justice databases so it finds the majority of legal journal articles.
It has access to whatever full-text materials to which we subscribe, and you can use Document Delivery to request anything that cannot be immediately supplied online
USearch indexes the journal information from multiple databases including HeinOnline and Westlaw UK. Westlaw UK itself indexes the journal content in Lexis+ UK. In addition, USearch also indexes several criminal justice databases so it finds the majority of legal journal articles.
It has access to whatever full-text materials to which we subscribe, and you can use Document Delivery to request anything that cannot be immediately supplied online.
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Legal databases contain specific legal-related filters and search options so you may find it more effective to search these databases separately, rather than searching within the larger USearch collections. The most important legal journal databases are listed below: |
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The Library offers over 200 subject databases, each with specialised content and/or thousands of full-text ejournal articles. You need to be able to create a successful search strategy using the range of boolean connectors, truncation and wildcard operators employed by the various databases. Below is a table of the operators used by the most heavily used databases. Always check the 'Help' section of any database to ensure you are using the appropriate search functions. |
