These are scholarly journals that are available online in electronic format. The electronic journals can have their print equivalents as well or can be published only in electronic format.
Remember with e-Journals you don’t have to go to the shelves to read an article, you can actually download the journal article, read, save as well as print as long as you have access to the internet.
The Unisa Library provides access to these scholarly journals through the e-Journal Finder which serves as an e-Journals catalogue. Therefore this is a tool we must use to find ejournals.
To access e-journals go to the Unisa library page @ http://www.unisa.ac.za/library
· click on Find e-journals
· type in the title of the journal and click on Search
· the results will show in which databases the journal is available and the years of coverage will be indicated
· click on the relevant database to access the journal’s home page where the volumes are displayed by year and volume number
Can I access e-Journals when Off Campus/ away from the University?
The good thing with e-journals is the fact that access is possible from both on campus and off campus. In short a definite Yes. Access to e-Journals is possible even when away from campus/University. With e-journals you do not need to physically be in the Unisa library.
In fact access is available from any device that have internet connection but as the user you need to authenticate yourself by putting in your Unisa Password. Without this Password which you created as a registered student or Unisa employee you cannot have access to e-journals available through Unisa Library.
If the computer, or device that you are using is not on the University network you may use one of two options that makes it possible to gain network access from off-site:
Alternatively, login in using your University/Library Username and Password.
Firstly, with e-Journals you save yourself time that you will have to wait in case you placed an article request from the Library. Remember also that you are not the only student sending in a request, meaning your request is going into a queue which works on a first come first served basis.
Secondly, you will be able to get articles needed for your reading on time for you to prepare your studies.You can then only request journal articles that you are unable to find from the e-Journal finder.
Thirdly, you will be able to get related articles that are equally useful to your task as you have the opportunity to browse articles and be able to evaluate retrieved results for relevance.
The cardinal rule when searching e-Journal finder is, we start by searching for the Journal title and NOT the article title.
It is not possible to search for the title of a journal article using the e-Journals catalogue. Carefully check the citation that you have to identify the title of the Journal first, and type this in the search box.
Example:
Robinson, M S. 1985. Collusion and the choice of auction. Rand Journal of Economics, 16(1):141-145.
Following the aforementioned explanation the search or browsing on e-journal finder will have to start with the title which is Rand Journal of Economics. Once the journal is identified then follows the year, the issue number and or the page number to help retrieve the article we are looking for.
With e-journals finder or catalogue you can opt to search for the journal:
Below are Screen captures of e-Journal Finder illustrating the whole search process.