Finding Articles in Law, Business, and Academic Journals  Tags: business journals law research basics  

Got a citation to an article and wondering if the Library has an online copy?  This guide will show you the best places to look for online articles.

If you have a citation to a law review article, the best place to start is to search your journal title in the Online Catalog. (The name of the journal, NOT the title of the article.) This will at least tell you if the library has print copies of the journal if you are unable to find full text online.  The easy way is to use the DTC Catalog search box on the library website main page. Use the drop down list to limit your search to "Journal/Magazine title." 

Try your search:

If you are searching for a journal from an abbreviated citation that you don't recognize or can't figure out, you can also search for the abbreviated name of the journal, such as Wis. L. Rev., in the catalog, provided that you are working from proper Bluebook abbreviations. 

If the journal is in HeinOnline's Law Journal Library, a database of law review articles, there will be a direct link in the Online Catalog.

HeinOnline will not include the most recent issues, so if that is what you need, notice if the catalog lists recent issues as being received.  Here, the library has received the first 3 issues of Vol. 83 of the Chicago-Kent Law Review:

Law school-published law reviews are located on the 7th floor, usually in alphabetical order. Commercially published law reviews are usually located with the relevant subject matter on the 9th floor, and you will need the library call number to find these.

Instead of seaching the online catalog, you could use the "Search: Online Journals" box on the library website's main page and learn that Wisconsin Law Review is in HeinOnline, but if you need recent issues, you would still have to search the Online Catalog for print, or use Lexis or Westlaw. 

Try your search:

HINT!

Sometimes, a citation looks like it's for an article, but it's really a chapter in a book. If your citation looks like this, then search the online catalog for the name of the book:

Evelyn Brody, Tax Treatment of Nonprofit Organizations: A Two Edged Sword?(with Joseph Cordes), in NonProfits and Government: Collaboration and Conflict (Elizabeth Boris and C. Eugene Steurle eds., 2d ed., 2006.

Tax Treatment . . . is the title of the chapter, and Nonprofits and Government: Collaboration and Conflict is the title of the book that includes it. The word "in" just before Nonprofits and Government is your clue that this is a chapter in a book.

If you can't find your article online or in the library catalog, ask a reference librarian if there are additional places to look or if getting a copy of the article on interlibrary loan is a possibility. Librarians can also help with obscure citations.

Find a law review article on Lexis (password required)

Find a law review article on Westlaw (password required)