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Law Library
(Sir John Salmond Library)
The University of Adelaide
SA 5005
AUSTRALIA
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Telephone: +61 8 8303 5558
Facsimile: +61 8 8303 3659

Online Full-text Journal Research

Searching the full-text of journal articles gives us another way to conduct legal research. It provides less of a topical approach to research and instead allows us to search for quotes, references and similar fact scenarios.

Searching Journals Online

Full-text searching of the online journal literature, that is searching for text within the journal article itself (not just retrieving a full text article) is available on a number of legal databases. Because these are generally very large databases your search strategy needs to be quite specific, unless you have the time to sort through hundreds or even thousands of search results. An introduction to some of the major law journal databases is provided below.

Australian Law Journals

AGIS Plus Text (Attorney-General's Information Service)

AGIS Plus Text is an online index of Australian law journals and is probably the most comprehensive online tool for coverage of Australian content. Some of the journal references also link to a pdf of the full-text article.

Enter your search query in the 'Search Query' box.
Or, you can search using the index tab, for an author, a case, etc.
brief search results are retrieved with the most recent article displayed first, with search terms highlighted in red.
To determine if the article is relevant, click on 'Complete record' to view the abstract of the article, and topic descriptors
where there is a PDF icon 'Full Text pdf' clicking on this link will load up the full-text of the article
if there is no PDF link, click on the "Search Full-text options" for information on how to source the article by other means

CaseBase Journals

CaseBase Journals Index is a index of law journals from Australia and Oceania. The search box is show below and search results are displayed in title alphabetical order. The results provide citation details and an abstract of the article, however they do not link to the full-text article itself. The researcher will need to save / print relevant article citations and look for the journal source through the Library Catalogue.

One distinctive feature of searching for journal articles through Casebase, is the linking to case law references. Citations to cases discussed within an article are provided with linking to the case digest record on CaseBase. This then provides easy navigation between journal and case law databases.

Legal Online (formerly LawBook Online)

The Australian legal journal content from Thomson Reuter is now available in full-text from Legal Online, although it is currently limited to published material from 2001 onwards. You can browse individual journals by title, volume and issue, using the left panel contents frame; or you can conduct a keyword search for author / title, reference to cases or legislation, as the screenshot below shows. This search can be conducted across multiple journals or a single journal title..

LexisNexis

There are a number of ways to locate the full-text journal databases on LexisNexis, the easiest is to perhaps browse the directory.

Browse the Directory Option

Choose to search by Source (red tab options on top left of screen).
Make sure the Legal tab is checked. This then displays the homepgae for US legal materials.
Scroll down to 'Find Laws by Country or Region' and click 'View more sources'.
Click on 'Australia' then on 'Journals' this then displays all the Australian law journals full-text on this platform
Note the breadcrumb to get this selection: Legal > Find Laws by Country or Region > Australia > Journals
Clicking on any journal title takes you to the database search screen for that journal, or you can select to search across more than one title using the 'Combined Sources' button

Points to note:

The page icon adjacent each title indicates you are at the database level (there are no further sub-folders).
The [I] icon will provide detailed information on the database, including source, field descriptors, currency, file name, etc.
Note that the first database option listed Australian Law Journals, Combined is a amalgam of all the other database files listed.
The file name for Australian Law Journals, Combined is AUST;AUJNLS.

Search for a journal on LexisNexis

If you want to determine if LN holds a particular journal:

Select the 'Find a Source' tab then enter the journal title, making sure you tick the 'Match terms in long names' radio button.
This then displays some journal databases, both full-text and index databases, mainly covering North American journals.
You can check the white boxes to combine search across more than one of the combined databases (eg. US law Reviews and Journals, Combined AND Combined Canadian Law Reviews);
or, select 'Law Reviews by Jurisdiction'

File Name search Option

If you already know the file name of your desired database you can go straight to the database as follows.

Browse down under Look for a Source.
Select the Find a Source grey tab.
Under Find A Source, enter your file name in the search text box, as follows:
- If you have the abbreviated file name, check Short Name and enter the file code, ie AUST;AUJNLS.
- If you only know the full name, check the Match terms in long name box and enter (for example) Australian law journals combined.
- Note this is a keyword search; or
- use the alphabetic browse bar at bottom of screen.

Your search will usually yield more than one result, but often they are all the same databases, just retrieved under different cross-reference searching enabled by LexisNexis. Simply select the appropriate file name and you will be taken to the database search screen.

Westlaw

Westlaw, like LexisNexis, enables browsing for journals as well as direct links to database files if you know the name of the file. Westlaw also has a search wizard to allow you to find databases by content.

Enter database file name in Search these databases box (left panel).
Some popular journal databases include:
- JLR – Journals and law reviews
- TP-ALL – Texts and periodicals
- WORLD-JLR – World journals and law reviews
or
Search for a particular journal title in Search for a database box (left panel), however this search can be a little hazy as your search terms are "AND"ed
or
Use the Directory to find journal databases, and make sure you select International Directory if you want journals other than Australian material.

Hein Online

Hein Online is a database of over 700 full text law journals. Although it covers predominantly US titles it does include many of the major international law titles, and is rapidly adding on the law reviews from Australian universities. The documents in Hein Online are scanned and searchable using OCR technology.

What distinguishes Hein Online from both Lexis and Westlaw is that Hein offer full text journal coverage of all titles from volume 1.

So, to give an example of coverage:

Journal	Hein Online	Westlaw	LexisNexis
Yale Law Journal	(1891)+	v.91 (1981)+	V.92 (1982)+

Hein Online therefore complements the coverage in both Westlaw and LexisNexis.

Hein Online search options include:

Citation Navigator – searching by citation at top right of screen
Alphabetical browse by journal title, then by volume, then by contents
Author/Title and Journal title search
Full text word and phrase searches

The search result of a citation search is below (vol.1 Sydney Law Review p.1)

Note the display options along the 3rd toolbar:

contents of the volume
scroll to previous page or next page, or select required page with drop down box
change text size
citations
print options usually offer printing the current page you are viewing, or printing the document.

Kluwer Online

Kluwer journals online provides online fulltext access to Kluwer journals, not just the law titles. You can browse titles by subject area and the screenshot below shows a listing of subheadings under Law. Just click on the adjacent + to see the titles listed.

Oxford Journals Online

The Library has online access to all the academic journals published by Oxford University Press. These journals can be browsed by title and volume no. or searched. They are also grouped by category, so it is easy to view all law journals available in this package.

The screenshot below lists the law journals available on Oxford Online, all can easily be accessed via a title search of the Catalogue.

Academic Onefile

Academic Onefile is an interdisciplinary index to scholarly and general-interest journals and magazines. Coverage is very broad, from the Journal of Biological Chemistry to Popular Mechanics, and includes most areas of academic enquiry, as well as many areas of popular culture. The full text of articles is available for many of the journals indexed.

Searching Print Journals

The best method is to become familiar with the main journals published in your area of interest. The journal collection in the Law Library (apart from the International law material) is arranged alphabetically by title of journal, rather than by legal topic.

To become acquainted with some of the principal journal titles for your subject, the Law Library lists some journals by core subject, and some elective subjects, on the Law Library website, at: Subject resources

By selecting the appropriate subject, e.g. Intellectual property, you are then shown a web page of resources, both print and web-based.

Alternatively, you could run a subject search on the Library Catalogue under [topic] periodicals, i.e. criminology periodicals (see screenshot below).

Below is displayed a results screen if you select the first subject heading which displays from your search. Note the drop down box to sort your results.