This article reports the findings of an exploratory study into students' perceptions of the extent that journal articles are helpful for learning public sector accounting. Data used in the study were mainly derived from face-to-face interviews with six students. Abstracting the meaning of articles was a dominant concept of learning for the majority of students who participated in this study. The students found journal articles to be a valuable aid to learning. Whilst they perceived academic articles as helpful in facilitating learning, they ranked the usefulness of professional articles higher than academic articles. The study also found that the majority of students who participated used a deep approach in reading a journal article; i.e. they tried to gain a full understanding of the article.