A Selection of Core Environmental Journals
Have a Citation and Need Access?
First, use Google Scholar and search for the title of the article. Look for the link to the pdf or the 
button on the right side. If you do not see the article, use the Citation Linker where you should see if the UCSB Library has access to it or use the Request function to request a copy through Interlibrary Loan.
Scholarly and Academic Journal Articles
Scholarly journals (also called academic journals) contain articles written by, and addressed to, experts in a discipline. Scholarly journals present the research of experts in a field, although these journals also often carry opinion pieces or even advertisements unique to the field addressed by the journal. Publication cycles vary for scholarly journals, ranging from yearly to monthly but most frequently they are published bimonthly (every other month) or quarterly.
Peer-reviewed journals (also called refereed or juried journals) send submitted articles to one or more experts for review before deciding to publish them. This review process helps ensure that published articles reflect solid scholarship in a field. Most often, the experts reviewing an article make critical comments on the text, comments that the author must incorporate into the article before its publication.
While not all scholarly journals are peer-reviewed, it is usually safe to assume that a peer-reviewed journal is also scholarly.
Is it Peer Reviewed?
Many of the journals indexed in specialized databases are scholarly but those databases do not tell you whether a journal is peer reviewed or not.
To find out if a journal is peer reviewed look at the submission process on their website for authors.
You can also ask a reference librarian.
Looking for Review Articles?
These are a great way to get an overview of your topic. Try searching through Annual Reviews, then try your search in any database and use the word "review" as part of your search. UC Library Search and Academic Search Complete have a number of review articles in them. Note that some reviews are actually book reviews.
UC Library Search
Perform your search, then select "Peer Reviewed Journals" under "Show Only" on the left side of the results screen.
Indexes to Scholarly Journals - Science and Engineering & Communication
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Scholarly, multi-disciplinary database covering thousands of journals and other publications. Includes full-text access to peer-reviewed journals, and indexing/abstracts for magazines, monographs, reports, and conference proceedings. Features some PDF content going back as far as 1867, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for 1,000 journals.
- National Agricultural Library Search This link opens in a new window
Indexes publications and resources encompassing all aspects of agriculture and allied disciplines, including plant and animal sciences, forestry, entomology, soil and water resources, agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, agricultural products, alternative farming practices, and food and nutrition. National Agricultural Library Search is the USDA National Agricultural Library’s main search tool.
- Agricultural & Environmental Science Database This link opens in a new window
Includes abstracts and citations from over 4,000 journals and other sources including conference proceedings, reports, monographs, books, and government publications.
- Annual Reviews This link opens in a new window
Provides the worldwide scholarly community with a useful and intelligent synthesis of the primary research literature for a broad spectrum of scholarly disciplines. Each year, Annual Reviews critically reviews the most significant primary research literature to guide you to the principal contributions of the field and help you keep up to date in your area of research.
- Aquatic Sciences & Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA) This link opens in a new window
Covers all aspects of aquatic science including aquaculture, biology, conservation, environmental quality, fisheries, freshwater environments, limnology, marine biotechnology, marine environments, meteorology, oceanography, policy and legislation, and wildlife management.
- Biological Science Collection This link opens in a new window
Provides comprehensive coverage of biological science fields including animal behavior, aquatic life and fisheries, chemoreception, biochemistry, ecology, plant science, toxicology, virology, microbiology, immunology genetics, health and safety science, oncogenes, entomology, and endocrinology neuroscience.
- BioOne Complete This link opens in a new window
Provides a unique aggregation of high-impact bioscience research journals, featuring timely content on a wide-array of today’s most pressing topics, including global warming, stem cell research, ecological and biodiversity conservation.
- Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Covers all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics. Includes financial data, books, monographs, major reference works, book digests, conference proceedings, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses and more.
- Communication Source (including Communication Abstracts) This link opens in a new window
Full-text research database for communication studies. Offers hundreds of top communication journals, magazines and other sources covering all related disciplines, including media studies, linguistics, speech pathology, rhetoric and discourse.
- Compendex (via Engineering Village) This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive bibliographic database of scientific and technical engineering research available, covering all engineering disciplines. Includes citations and abstracts from engineering journals and conference proceedings.
- ERIC This link opens in a new window
Covers education-related literature. Provides access to ERIC documents and journal articles.
- GeoRef This link opens in a new window
Provides citations from journals, serials, maps, theses and dissertations, government publications, books, and reports in the fields of geology and geophysics. Topics include energy sources, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, groundwater pollution, nuclear reactor sites, landslides, and erosion, as well as the history of the earth, the structure of the earth, the study of ore deposits, and geostatistics.
- Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
- ProQuest Dissertations and Theses This link opens in a new window
Indexes the work of authors from graduate schools and universities in North America and from around the globe. Starting with the 1980s records include abstracts of the works. Our subscription gives UCSB users access to UC dissertations in full text 1997 forward.
- PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
Provides access to international literature in psychology, the behavioral sciences, and related disciplines from professional journals, book chapters, books, reports, and dissertations. Most citations include abstracts. In addition, there are millions of cited references in journal articles, books, and chapters.
- SciTech ConnectProvided by the U.S. Department of Energy; good for renewable energy sources. Includes many full-text technical reports.
1948 to present.
Note: This database is not limited to UCSB users. This database does not have links to Get it at UC. You will need to look up journals in UC Library Search to determine availability.
- Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new windowCSA Sociological Abstracts Database is a primary resource for accessing the latest research sponsored in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database draws information from an international selection of thousands of journals and other sources.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowWeb of Science consists of nine databases: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Science Citation Index Expanded for journal aritcles; Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science and Conference Proceedings - Social Sciences and Humanities; Book Citation Index - Science and Book Citation Index - Social Sciences and Humanities; and Current Chemical Reactions and Index Chemicus. Web of Science covers thousands of research journals, and extensive collections of conference proceedings and books. across hundreds of disciplines. Both the science and social sciences journal article files offer searchable author abstracts. All three databases are updated weekly.