Subject & Study Guides: Building Construction: Journal Articles

Multi-database Journal Article Searching

Use these two tools to search across a wide range of construction-related databases simultaneously. This is a good starting point, but will not support in-depth searches.

Articles Express
Search for journals articles across a range of databases with this FAST search engine. This is a great first step for searching for journal articles. Just enter your keywords and hit 'Search'!

Google Scholar [Free] This link opens in a new window
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Google Scholar searches academic publishers, professional societies and pre-print archives. Not all the results will be available online, however. Results may include citations to works that are not online, or items from databases that Unitec does not subscribe to. Online help for using Google Scholar.

Specialist Construction Journals

Built Environment Economist: Australia & New Zealand
Built Environment Economist : Australia and New Zealand is a quarterly journal for the quantity surveying and building/construction industry. Click on one of Ebsco database links to access this journal.
Buildings [MDPI]
"Buildings" is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal on building science, building engineering and architecture published monthly online by MDPI. The International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB) is affiliated with "Buildings".

Individual Databases

These databases collect articles together from newspapers, academic and trade journals and other publications. Search here for the latest news and academic research.

ArchINFORM [Free] This link opens in a new window
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An architectural database including over 9500 projects, both built and unrealised.
Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre Plus [Ebsco] This link opens in a new window
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Australia/NZ Reference Centre is a large collection of regional full text including magazines, newspapers, newswires and reference books.
Ebsco business databases [Ebsco] This link opens in a new window
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Allows you to search Business Source Complete, Econlit and other databases at the same time.
Emerald Insight [Emerald Group] This link opens in a new window
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Emerald's Premier collection features over 80,000 articles from over 300 titles. The collection continues to disseminate the latest thinking, from authors at 95 of the Financial Times Top 100 business schools and forms an essential part of the research library at most of these institutions. Our specialist collections in fields such as Education, Engineering, Library Studies and Marketing build on this strength; offering focused international research in a range of subject fields
QV Costbuilder [QV] This link opens in a new window
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QV Costbuilder (previously known as Rawlinsons New Zealand Construction Handbook) provides access to building cost data for those in the building trade industry and property professionals.
See instructions here for help with logging in to CostBuilder.
Click on Padlock icon for link to login booking calendar and password access information.
ScienceDirect [Elsevier] This link opens in a new window
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Science Direct is a leading full-text scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters from nearly 2,500 journals and more than 30,000 books. This includes Health and Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering, and Social and Behavioural Sciences

Working out if a journal is peer-reviewed

There are several ways you can find out if a journal is peer-reviewed.

1) Check the home page of the journal. Generally if a journal is peer-reviewed, they are not going to be shy to say so.

2) Use the 'peer-reviewed journal' limiters on databases such as EBSCO, Articles Express. Note: The vast majority of content on ScienceDirect is peer-reviewed as well.

3) Insert the word "peer-reviewed" in your search on other databases.

4) Use Ulrich's Web to search for a journal title. If a journal is peer-reviewed, it will have this icon on the left hand side:

Ulrichsweb This link opens in a new window
Ulrich's can be searched to find information on a journal, including whether or not it is considered to be scholarly.

Warning: A few journals say that they are peer-reviewed, but still publish some non-peer-reviewed articles. Check the journal home page/s carefully, especially if you can't find a DOI, and if you're unsure if an article is peer-reviewed, contact Adrian.

Need help with journal databases?

Have a look at these videos and guides.

Searching databases for journal articles and news

All about Peer Reviewed Journals

A few tips on using Google Scholar

A few tips on using Google Scholar