ASSIGNMENT THREE

 

Introduction to Journals and Article Citations

Most of what you need to know about  journal databases will come from your reading in Research Strategies. Here are a few additional tips:

Research for articles in journals can be frustrating. Get used to that fact now, before you start, and you will have fewer surprises to face. Every journal database has its own quirks and searching idiosyncrasies. When you finally choose the right search terms in the right combination, you need to decipher the article citations, decide on which ones you want, and then determine whether or not your library has those journals and in what format.

If it’s this much trouble, why bother with journal articles at all?

• Because they often have cutting edge material
  
• Because they are often very specific to particular issues
  
• Because they are short and thus easier to handle than books
• Because most scholarly articles are available only through such databases (not through Google)
  
• Because professors see the value of  journal articles and often dock student papers that ignore this resource.
  

Article Citations

There are minimum requirements to identify a journal article in Turabian Notes/Bibliography or APA format.  Here are two sample citations:

    Turabian Notes/Bibliography

Nicholson, Amanda, Richard Rose, and Martin Bobak. "Associations between Different Dimensions of Religious Involvement and
Self-rated Health in Diverse European Populations." Health Psychology 29, no. 2 (March 2010): 227-235.

[If your citation looks like this, you have the wrong Turabian format (Reference List or Author-Date format):
Nicholson, Amanda, Richard Rose, and Martin Bobak. 2010. "Associations between different dimensions of religious involvement and self-rated health in diverse European populations." Health Psychology 29, no. 2 (March): 227-235. The date needs to be at the end of the citation, not right after the author, if you are using the Turabian Notes/Bibliography format.]

     APA

Nicholson, A., Rose, R., & Bobak, M. (2010). Associations between different dimensions of religious involvement and self-rated health in diverse European populations. Health Psychology, 29(2), 227-235. doi:10.1037/a0018036.
[This is a citation for an article with a DOI. If there is no DOI, use the Internet home page URL for the journal involved].

 

A Short Introduction to Relevant Databases for Seminary Student Research

ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials - A helpful tutorial is located at: https://vimeo.com/160815488/62fbc92114. Please be sure to view it.

• this is the largest  journal database on religion in the world.
• it not only indexes religious journals but also essays collected in published books and even some books.  Four designations are common - article (for a  journal article), essay (for an essay in a book), book (for a reviewed book or a book that is a collection of essays) and review (for book reviews).
• it provides quite a lot of electronic full text.
• ATLA Religion Database is quite sophisticated in searching.  It has a good subject heading system divided into "Subjects" and "Names as Subjects."  To find these features, click on the "Indexes" button at the top, then click on the drop-down box next to "Browse."  You can also use the "Narrow by subject" feature to the left of the results citations.
• ATLA has a "Scriptures" search (top of the ATLA page) function. This will get you articles on a particular passage.
• There is an "Advanced Search" feature which can be useful to search across several fields in the data records for articles.   
  
  

JSTOR

• a storage database for full runs of key journals back to their beginning.
• the search interface is pretty basic but lacks a lot of features. For example, it has no subject headings. For a tutorial, see https://vimeo.com/160924222/a4c924bc9a
• this database covers many topic areas, so it is limited in coverage of any one topic.
• journals generally lack articles from the most recent 5 or more years.
• JSTOR has updated its citation and export features since the above tutorial. You can access both citations and export to a bibliographic manager through the Cite this Item link to the right of a citation, or export a group of citations to a bibliographic managerr by clicking the boxes next to the citations you want and using the export link:
  
  
  

ProQuest Religion

• a smaller database than ATLA, but it contains a fair amount of full text
• search is considerably less sophisticated than ATLA.  You can do a keyword/Boolean search or switch to "Advanced Search."
• it is strongly recommended that you use the limiter for "scholarly journals," since this database covers quite a large number of more popular religious magazines.  You can either preset this on the first screen or choose the "scholarly journals" link above your list of results once you have completed your search.
   

Old Testament Abstracts / New Testament Abstracts

• two great sister resources for articles on biblical passages.
• the Scripture search button is much more practical to use in most cases with this database than a keyword search (Scripture button located at the very top of the screen - NOTE that it searches differently from the Scripture search in ATLA).
• contains some linked full text from other EBSCO databases.
• not useful for topics other than biblical studies.
  
  

PsycINFO (Tutorial at https://vimeo.com/162139512/9688350153)

• This is the #1 journal database in Psychology/Counseling.  It is not a full text index in itself but has quite a number of linked full text articles from other EBSCO databases.
• It has an extensive number of limiters.  It is best for you to limit to "Peer Reviewed/Refereed (Scholarly)" journals.
• You can also limit by using the Subject: Major Heading link to the left on the results pages.
• If you can't find your subject heading there, this database also has an extensive Thesaurus (subject heading system) as well as an advanced search.  To use the Thesaurus, click the "Thesaurus" link at the top of the page, enter a likely subject into the "Browse" box, click on "Browse," and if you chose wisely, you will see the subject heading on the left with a check box beside it.  If you click on the word itself, you will get more information on its meaning, as well as related terms.  If you check the check box and then click on "Search," you will get all the articles on that subject in the database.
• You can also find subject headings by clicking on the title of an article citation found with a keyword search and locating linked subject headings in the longer entry.
• Searchers sometimes want to specify a type of study (empirical, qualitative, etc.). You can do this by clicking on Methodology in the column to the left on the results page.
  
  

PsycARTICLES (This database is actually included in PsychINFO, and searches exactly like PsycINFO above, though you can search it separately  See the PsycINFO tutorial for directions on use).

• Full text database for about 110 journals from the American Psychological Association and allied organizations, with complete runs from volume 1 for most of them.  The advantage is that it's all full text.  The disadvantage is that it covers only about 110 journals.
• It has all the search features that PsycINFO (the much larger database) has.
• Note that, if you search PsycINFO you are already also searching PsycARTICLES. Choose PsycARTICLES on its own only if you don't need many articles and prefer fewer search results.
  

PsycBOOKS (This database searches similarly to PsycINFO above.  See the PsycBOOKS tutorial for directions on use.)

• Full text database of over 32,000 book chapters from volumes published by the American Psychological Association and allied organizations. It also includes the full text of almost 1,500 significant psychology books published over the past number of decades.
• It has all the search features that PsycINFO (the much larger database) has.
• Chapters in books are similar to journal articles and can be used for this assignment.
  
  

EBSCO Academic Search Complete (Tutorial for Academic Search Complete)

• a large, general database (i.e. covers many subject areas) so it is not strong in any one subject area.
• it has a large amount of electronic full text in it.
• narrow your initial search to "Peer Reviewed/Refereed (Scholarly)" and select Publication Type - Periodical.
• try the "advanced search" to specify your search terms more.
• try using "Subject: Thesaurus term" link on the left of the the results pages.  Keywords can be deceptive in their meaning, whereas a subject heading will identify exactly what you are looking for.
  
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A personal message from Professor Badke:

 

Be sure to review the Textbook material in Chapters Three and Four on searching with keywords and controlled vocabularies in preparation for this assignment, in addition to Chapter Five on journal database searching. 

To access journal databases by subject discipline, go to the library home page and click on the Articles tab at the top of the screen.

For information on downloading journal article citations to EndNote, see the EndNote guide at http://libguides.twu.ca/EndNote/.

Creating correctly formatted journal articles - The choices

1. Use EndNote Basic/Web.

2. Use Citation Machine (http://www.citationmachine.net/) or KnightCite (http://webapps.calvin.edu/knightcite/index.php).

3. Look up the article title in Google Scholar and use the More-->Cite function (can be unreliable).

4. For the EBSCO databases, below is a guide to creating automatic citations:

 

 

 

      

Read Research Strategies, Chapter Five, Sections 5.2-5.9, and review Chapters 3 and 4. 

A. State your research question.

B. Do searches in two of the library's databases (http://www.twu.ca/library/perindex.html) for articles relevant to each your research questions. Be sure to pay attention to the Start With these Databases information, which will guide you to the best ones.

Be sure to use two different journal databases (you can repeat one or more databases for the second topic).   If the database you are using has subject headings or a thesaurus, at least one of your searches must include use of a subject heading. Grades will be deducted if subject heading searching is possible but was not used. Avoid combining two or more databases in a single search. Doing so will remove the option to use subject headings, and combining databases usually produces a lot of irrelevant results.

Some Tips:

1. The "Start With these Databases" box for each subject is preferred.
2. For subject heading searches, you can employ a "narrow by subject" option (such as the Subject dropdown to the left of the results list in any EBSCO database), or you might find subject headings by clicking on an "indexes" tab or on a link entitled "Thesaurus."
3. Do not, for this assignment, use freely available databases like Directory of Open Access Journals. Do not use Google Scholar.  Use the commercial databases available through the TWU library website.

C. Indicate:

1. The names of the journal databases you used (Don't refer just to  EBSCO,  ProQuest, etc. which are company names.  Instead, give the full title, e.g. EBSCO Academic Search Complete or EBSCO ATLA Religion Database). Make sure the databases you use are relevant to your topic.

2. The search terms you used, and the form of their combination (e.g. Oil AND Nigeria). Put the search terms in the exact form in which you used them, listing each on a separate line, e.g.

Oil and Nigeria, then narrowed by subject heading Petroleum industry.

Oil workers, then narrowed by subject heading Nigeria

Some Tips:

a. Make sure you choose terminology that is directly relevant to your research question, and carefully screen your results to be sure that they are closely relevant to your research questions.
b. Remember that subject heading searches are required if available. Indicate in your listing of subject headings used that they are actually subject headings, e.g. Evangelistic Work (Subject Heading).

D. For each database, list ten relevant journal articles (or essays from books) which you identified from your search of  the databases you used in 2., including author, title, journal name, volume and issue number, date, and page numbers, using proper Turabian Notes (not Turabian Reference List) or APA format. Avoid book reviews or citations to books. You will thus have a total of 20 article citations in your assignment, 10 from each database [see the assignment template for clarification].  Articles may be the same in two lists on the same topic, though they may well be mostly different.

Both lists of citations need to be in alphabetical order by author.

Some Tips:

1. You will be graded on wise choice of databases and search terms, and on how relevant the articles are to your research question.
2. You are urged to use EndNote Basic/Web to download your article citations whenever possible.  You must put all citations into Turabian Notes or APA format (the latter only for psychology or linguistics topics.)
3. There are two Turabian formats. You want the Notes or Bibliography format, not the Reference List format.

Rubric for Assignment Three.  Highest grade meets these criteria:

• Chooses the best databases for the topic.
• Creative use of terminology, including controlled vocabulary [subject headings, etc.] if available.
• Articles are on target to address the research question.
• Bibliographies are in alphabetical order by author.
• Format is correct.

 

(Last updated: August 29, 2016)