This guide explains how to find journal articles using print and online resources in our library
Journals
Most legal journals produce annual indexes at the end of each year, and these are bound with the journal issues into an annual volume.
These indexes are normally arranged by:
- author
- legislation
- case
- subject
There’s no definitive list of which journals produce indexes, so you have to check each journal for each year
Many journals have their own website and an archive which may go back for decades.
Some journals give free access to articles on their websites, some provide articles on a pay per view basis
Some publishers list their journals and provide free abstract
Oxford University Press provides abstracts for some of the journal articles on its website.
Cambridge University Press offers a similar service.
1947 to 1983 Legal Literature Index
We have a subject index, compiled in-house, of a small number of major law journals from the period 1947 to 1983 (1978 to 1980 is missing).
This index is useful for older material, as online indexes do not go this far back.
The index is held in store, ask library staff to use it.
The main journals included are:
- Justice of the Peace
- New Law Journal
- Law Journal (the pre-1965 title of the New Law Journal)
- Solicitors Journal
Other titles are included for some years, but not every year.
You can find a complete record of the contents of the index by searching for "legal literature: journal articles index" in the library catalogue.
Ingenta Connect
IngentaConnect is a database which has abstracts of articles for scholars.
You can buy some of these articles through its website.
LexisLibrary Journals Index
LexisLibrary is a subscription database which indexes articles from a range of journals and contains the full text of some journal articles.
Publishers include:
- Bloomsbury Professional
- Informa
- Cambridge University Press
You can only access our LexisLibrary subscription in the library.
Westlaw UK Legal Journals Index
Westlaw UK is a subscription database which contains over half a million article abstracts from UK and English-language European journals.
It also contains full-text articles from journal titles published by:
- Sweet & Maxwell
- Oxford University Press
- Cambridge University Press
You can only access our Westlaw subscription in the library.
Contact our enquiry service for journal articles. We can send you up to five summaries of articles from Westlaw free of charge.