30 Journal Articles

Journal articles provide a topical discussion of legal issues, cases and legislative developments. They are published in journals, which may specialise in a jurisdiction, such as the New Zealand Law Journal, or in a legal subject, such as the New Zealand Business Law Quarterly. Journals are published in regular instalments, with each issue containing several individual articles. There are hundreds of law journals varying by jurisdiction, subject focus and audience.

Practitioner Journals

Some journals are written for practitioners and are referred to as “practitioner journals”. These can be useful for understanding how a legal issue is managed from a practical perspective. They are usually short pieces, perhaps with glossy pictures and with minimal references. Law Talk, published by the New Zealand Law Society, is a good high-quality example.

Scholarly or Academic Journals

Scholarly law-journal articles are written by legal experts (academics, researchers, members of the judiciary or legal profession) for an academic audience. They are usually longer pieces of research, backed up by theory and have numerous references. They also go through a process of peer review.

Although scholarly journal articles can provide authoritative, high-quality and in-depth coverage of a legal issue, they may not always reflect current law. It is important to pay special attention to the date of the article – is it current?

Peer Review

At law school, a requirement for research assignments may be to use information from academic journal articles that are peer-reviewed. Peer review is a process in which other scholars in the same field (peers) evaluate the quality of an article and make suggestions for revision prior to publication. This is usually done anonymously in an attempt to avoid bias. The aim is to ensure that the work is rigorous, coherent and based on sound research.

Correctly identifying the different parts of a journal citation is the first step to finding a journal article

Sometimes a journal article can be found simply by copying and pasting the article title into a search engine or library database, but if that does not work, other strategies are required. Another good method to find the article is to find the full journal title first and then search within the journal for the article. So being able to identify and decode the journal title abbreviation is important.

The illustration below shows the different elements of the citation: M Roberts “Continuing representations and agency” (2014) 20 NZBLQ 73. The elements are highlighted to show the article title (Continuing representations and agency) and the journal title abbreviation (NZBLQ). NZBLQ is the abbreviation for the New Zealand Business Law Quarterly.

Steps to Find a Journal Article

1. Decode the journal title by using the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations.
2. Take the full title (eg, New Zealand Business Law Quarterly) and paste it into the library catalogue.
3. Follow the prompts to the hardcopy version that might be on the shelves or click the link to the electronic journal.
4. Look at your citation again to find the appropriate year or volume and then the start page.

The majority of legal journal articles are available online in databases, such as Lexis Advance, Westlaw New Zealand or HeinOnline. If journal articles cannot be located using the steps above, try these legal databases. Note that publishers will only host the journals they publish in their own databases, so if the article cannot be found in one database, try another. Contact a law librarian for further guidance if required.