For general help see the searching databases tutorial.
MUT Discovery - Search Journals, Articles and more
Agriculture: Journals
What is a journal?
A journal (periodical) is a scholarly publication containing articles written by researchers, academics, practitioners and other experts. Journals usually focus on a specific discipline or field of study. Articles in journals often deal with very specific aspects of topics and in depth. If you want a broad overview of your topic, start with a text book. Journals are like magazines: different issues or parts are published at regular intervals and each has the same title. Often each part has a number and all the parts for a year have a volume number. Usually several authors write articles per issue.
Finding online journals and articles
Most academic journals are not freely available via Google or Google Scholar. Libraries pay for access and publishers/vendors put together collections of journals for multiple years in databases. These collections may be country of subject specific or multidisciplinary. The Library does not have full text access to every journal that exists.
There are different ways to search for journals and journal articles:
Finding South African journal articles
SABINET AFRICAN JOURNALS Online provides a listing of all journals and journal articles published in South Africa in All subject areas.
Full text articles from South African newspapers are available from SA Media on Sabinet
Finding print journals
From the Library website click on Library catalogue (I Link). Type in the title of the journal and click on full record to get details about which issues and year of the journals are held by the library.
Find the journal in the relevant section of the library. Library keeps its journals separate from the books and arranged by Dewey decimal order. Not all journals or articles are available full text online. There are various ways to access online journals.
Newspapers are also periodicals although generally not scholarly but may be a useful source of information. Most newspapers have online versions. SA Media on Sabinet provides scanned newspaper articles from a wide range of South African newspapers going back several decades and Newspaper gateway or Newspaper Direct/PRESSREADER provides access to a useful range of newspapers from around the world.
Some key Agriculture journals in print and online:
Agriculture: Databases
what is a database?
Databases index and organise references to journal articles, newspaper articles, chapters in books, conference papers and in some cases. Some databases also include the full text of the articles. Databases usually include many publications over many years and are often subject specific. Most academic literature is not freely available so libraries pay for access to journals via databases.
This is the most useful ways of finding articles when you do not know in which journals articles are published.
On the MUT library website is an alphabetical list of all databases.
For South African resources use the SABINET Online databases (choose from the list).
For international databases try:
Off campus access to databases: Open Athens
Most publishers and suppliers do not allow free off campus access. You will need to authenticate yourself as a legitimate member of MUT. You need to login on Open Athens with your institutional credentials. Once you have authenticated yourself you will be presented with the list of those databases that allow off campus access.
What to do if a journal is not available at or via MUT?
You can use the Interlibrary Loan facility through your Subject Librarian of your faculty. You can send him / her email with all the details and the librarian will try and find a library within South Africa that can provide a copy of the article.