Journals are a good resource for current scholarship on topics since they are published regularly throughout the year. Journal articles are much shorter than books whose longer format is often better suited to a thorough explanation and discussion of a subject.
Ambrose Library has current print subscriptions to many journals, and also houses past issues of many journals in our Bound Periodicals section, or in microfilm/microfiche; consult the library map to see where these collections are located.
All print journals are available for in-library use only. You are welcome to make copies or scans of pages at the Student Printer. Please note that you are lawfully only permitted to copy or scan one chapter or 10% of a copyrighted work for educational purposes. Refer to these Fair Dealing Guidelines for additional information.
The majority of the library's journals are accessible online through journal article databases. We'll go over some definitions in the next section, and then move on to some searching tips.
When you hear the word article, you may think of something written in a newspaper or magazine. When we talk about articles in university, we're usually referring to a formal piece of writing which describes new knowledge or ideas based on original research, analysis or interpretation. This type of article is similar in length to an essay or chapter in a book.
In the following citation, the article is in bold:
Smith, David Andrew. 2018. “‘No Poor Among Them’: Sabbath and Jubilee Years in Lukan Social Ethics.” Horizons in Biblical Theology 40 (2): 142–65.
A journal is a scholarly publication in a specific discipline that is published regularly throughout the year. It contains articles written by researchers and experts.
In the following citation, the journal is in bold:
Smith, David Andrew. 2018. “‘No Poor Among Them’: Sabbath and Jubilee Years in Lukan Social Ethics.” Horizons in Biblical Theology 40 (2): 142–65.
You can find out if the library subscribes to a journal in print or online, or if we have back issues, by searching for a title using the Journal Search. For example, searching the journal title above brings you this result:
Clicking the Available at Ambrose Library or Online Access links brings you into the record where you can see more details on where the library houses various back issues.
The library has:
Peer review is a process in which a scholar's research is critically evaluated by other experts in that subject area before being published in a journal.
The terms scholarly and academic may also be used to refer to articles that go through the peer review process.
Many databases offer the option to search for peer-reviewed journal articles; we'll show you how to do this in the database searching sections, below.
A database is a searchable electronic collection of journals which contains citations, and sometimes the full text, of articles.
The following article was found in the database ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials PLUS:
Smith, David Andrew. 2018. “‘No Poor Among Them’: Sabbath and Jubilee Years in Lukan Social Ethics.” Horizons in Biblical Theology 40 (2): 142–65.
ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials PLUS (often shortened to just "ATLA") is the library's most comprehensive database of articles, reviews, and essays in all fields of religion and theology. It includes scholarship representing major religions, faiths, denominations, and languages, and covers the following areas:
Use the "step" tabs above to learn how to find ATLA on the library's website and how to search it effectively for your research topics.
Go to the library's Journal Databases by Subject page. Here you'll find sections for all the areas of study at Ambrose. Scroll to the bottom and click the Theology tab to open that section, then click the ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials PLUS link:
This is what the database will look like when you arrive. You know you're in ATLA because the name displays at the top. You'll also see the EBSCO logo; like many of the library's databases, ATLA is hosted on the EBSCO platform.
You can begin entering your search terms in the search boxes available.
This example will use the phrase "holy spirit." You can see that there are quotation marks ( " ) around this phrase, and this is to ensure that these words are searched in this exact order; if there weren't quotation marks around this phrase, the database would look for any appearance of these words, not necessarily in this exact order.
You will also want to make use of the options in the Select a Field drop-down menu. There are many more options than in the screenshot below, so be sure to explore! This example will use the TX All Text option, which will search for "holy spirit" in multiple areas in a record: the title, summary, abstract, subject headings, and the full text (if available). This option casts a wide net, so it is a good place to start your search! Let's click Search and see what happens.
This search retrieves over 100,000 results! This is far too many to browse through, so we want to find a way to focus our search to look for articles that are most relevant.
You may want to take note of the Subjects that appear under the titles of articles; subjects are labels that describe or pinpoint what an item is about, so if you see your search terms in the subjects, you'll know that an article is more about those concepts than if they just appear in the title, summary, or somewhere in the body of the article.
In our example, "holy spirit" appears as a subject in the first article. Let's scroll back up to the top and select SU Subjects in the drop-down to search for our phrase in only the subjects of articles.
You can see that we've changed the drop-down menu to SU Subjects and this has dropped our results to just over 9,000; much more manageable, although still too many to browse through. Let's take a look at the left-hand menu, Refine Results, to see if we can further refine or limit our results.
There are a number of ways to limit our results in the Refine Results section.
Your instructor may require that you only reference peer reviewed sources; in this case, you can select the Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals filter. Your instructor may also require recent sources (e.g., from within the last 10 years), so you can enter a preferred date range in the Publication Date filter:
You may want to limit your results to just those languages you read:
And checking the Subjects filter may give you options on further pinpointing your topic:
When I added the 4 filters from the last step, I reduced my results to a very manageable 268! Let's click on one of the titles to go into the record to see some of the additional tools available in EBSCO databases.
To view the full text of an article, click the PDF Full Text link.
If you don't want to read the article right away, use the Email option to send yourself the full text, or the Permalink option to send yourself a stable link to the article.
Use the Add to folder option to create folders to organize the articles you find in your searches in your MyEBSCO account.
Use the Cite option to generate a citation for the article in a variety of citation styles that you can copy and paste into your bibliography (don't forget to review for accuracy).
If you're writing a paper on a particular verse in the Bible, refer to this helpful video created by ATLA on how to search for specific scripture citations using three different strategies:
An everything search is a great way to get a broad overview of a topic and potentially find additional search terms to make note of and use in additional searching.
When you perform an everything search, you’re searching hundreds of millions of records from publishers and content aggregators; the number of records is constantly growing as additional data sources are added, so it is an incredibly powerful tool and casts a very large net when you search it for results. Although it is very powerful, it's important to view an everything search as one tool in your toolbox for finding journal articles as it won't find everything that's available in databases.
Results in an everything search include books, eBooks, journal articles, open source resources, dissertations, conference proceedings, book reviews, newspaper articles, etc. See additional instructions on the Using the Library Catalogue guide for how to search for journal articles using an everything search.
Click here for tips on Using the Library's Databases
A full-text database covering multiple disciplines.
Child Development & Adolescent Studies
Full text articles and references for current and historical literature related to growth and development of children to the age of 21.
A comprehensive source of full text for nursing & allied health journals.
ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)
Content includes journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, dissertations and theses, and books dating back to 1966.
Family & Society Studies Worldwide
Comprehensive coverage of research, policy, and practice literature in the fields of Family Science, Human Ecology, Human Development, and Social Welfare from 1970 to the present.
Streaming videos in Humanities, Social Sciences, Business, Economics, Science, Mathematics, Health, and Medicine.
A full-text database covering nursing and allied health topics, including pediatric nursing, critical care, mental health, nursing management, medical law and more.
Indigenous Peoples of North America
Manuscripts, monographs, newspapers, photographs, motion pictures, images of artwork, and more to support an understanding of Indigenous Peoples in Canada and the United States. Also includes indigenous-language materials, including dictionaries, bibles, and primers.
Database providing journal articles, books, images, and primary sources for a wide variety of disciplines.
Includes abstracts to articles, reviews, books, and software on the New Testament.
Indexing and abstracts for articles, books, and software on the Old Testament covering topics such as antiquities, archaeology, biblical theology, philology and more.
Open Access Digital Theological Library (OADTL)
This is a collection of open access materials in religious studies from various theological and confessional perspectives. For more information on the criteria for inclusion in this collection visit the OADTL website.
Primarily full-text periodicals for religious and spiritual studies, including formal theological studies and commentaries from perspectives of worldwide religions. Contents include scholarly journals as well as books from religious publishing bodies and nondenominational organizations.
A collection of theology journals available from SAGE Publications.
Twentieth Century Religious Thought, Volume I: Christianity
This collection includes the complete 17-volume German edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke and English edition of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Series. There is also a selection of English-language editions from key international authors. This material supports studies in comparative religion, theology, world religion, religion and law, and religion and politics.