Skip to Main Content

Occupational Health and Safety: Journals/Databases

This guide provides information and links about resources relevant to OHS in the ECU Library and other useful external resources

What is an Academic Journal?

Academic Journals publish original research and commentary on recent developments in specific disciplines. Issues are published on a regular basis in a similar way as magazines.

Tip: You may need to consider several options for finding journal articles for Occupational Health and Safety. The best options will depend on the topic:

1. Search ECU Worldsearch and limit to journal article, peer reviewed. You'll find useful articles from international journals such as Safety Science, but indexing of Australian journals is limited.

2. Keyword search within a particular journal. e.g. Journal of Health, Safety and Environment

3. Search the subject databases. e.g. MEDLINE (useful for occupational health topics), Informit databases and CCH IntelliConnect (useful to find some additional Australian information) or multidisciplinary research citation databases, Web of Science or SCOPUS.

ECU WorldSearch

ECU WorldSearch is a search engines that allows you to search across the library's collection of most journal articles. It's a good starting point. Use the limit options in the left hand side bar to limit by date and to 'peer reviewed' articles.

Journal articles are available online. Follow the links from ECU WorldSearch to the full text.

Search terms entered are automatically combined with AND. You need to put a phrase in quotes. e.g. "accident causation models" safety

Access ECU WorldSearch from the Library Homepage using your ECU login at the prompt.

Featured Journals

Journal of health, safety and environment

Previous title: Journal Of Occupational Health And Safety, Australia And New Zealand

Major journal for OSH in Australia. The "Journal of Health, Safety and Environment" is a peer-reviewed journal covering HSE in Australia and New Zealand. This journal presents current HSE research and the latest emerging HSE topics as examined by industry specialists and academics. It is part of the CCH OHS Solution Finder online database.

Key safety journals published by Elsevier (ScienceDirect full text journals):

Safety Science

Safety and Health at Work

Journal of Safety Research

Accident Analysis and Prevention

Useful reference

Winder, C. (2009). The development of OHS legislation in Australia. Journal of Occupational Health and Safety, Australia and New Zealand, 25(4), 277-287.

To link to this article copy and paste the article title into ECU WorldSearch and follow the links to the full text.

Searching Tips

1. Find Synonyms (alternative keywords):

  • industrial hygiene OR occupational health
  • labor OR labour

2. Use Truncation (putting * at the end of a word stem):

  • occupat* (occupations, occupational, occupation)
  • manag* (managment, manager, managers) 

4. AND (joins concepts and narrows the search)

  • safety AND mine
  • stress AND (occupational OR job)

5. "...." (inverted commas) use for a phrase

  • "risk management