Using academic journal articles for research and study

What is a journal article?

Across your university studies, you will spend a lot of time reading journal articles. They may be set as weekly readings by your units, or used as part of your research for an essay or research project.

Journals are published on a regular basis, either weekly, monthly or sometimes annually. As they are published periodically, journals are sometimes referred to as periodicals. Journals are often specific to an academic field or research area and are published in a similar style to magazines - articles are compiled into issues, which are then grouped into volumes. This helps to keep track of the articles, as the rate of publication is high.

While magazines are written for general readers, journals are written for academic readers. Journal articles allow researchers to communicate their discoveries, theories, and insights to the academic community and contribute to the advancement of knowledge within their respective fields. Because of their academic approach, including rigorous research and peer-review, they are  considered scholarly sources when used and cited in research.

Identifying journal articles

It’s not always easy to tell if what you’ve found is a journal article or another type of resource. Journal articles have some unique features that are different from books, news, reports and websites, which can help you to identify them.

Common article structures

Journal articles tend to follow similar structures. Three common structures are:

• The ‘Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion’ structure, often called the ‘IMRAD’ structure
• The review structure
• The thematic structure.

Click on the buttons below to learn more about the different sections of a journal article for each of these structures.