6. How to find Journals
Transcription
6. How to find Journals
6. How to find Journals Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you should be able to: Identify a reference for a journal article Identify and locate a specific journal article Select appropriate Online Databases for your literature search Search systematically to identify relevant journal articles Journals will provide the most up to date information on your topic. Journals may also provide you with specific information on a topic that you may not be able to find in books. 6.1 What is a journal? Journals (sometimes called magazines, periodicals or serials) are collections of articles. They are normally published at regular intervals during the year. They can be: Daily Weekly Monthly Quarterly (4 times a year) Annual (once a year) L&IS currently subscribes to many thousands of journals, of which the majority are available electronically. Many journal articles will have a short ‘abstract’ (a summary) at the beginning. You can quickly get an idea of the content of the article by reading the abstract. Recent issues of journals in your subject area will have the latest thinking in that field, so you can keep up to date by reading them. If you become aware that a particular journal regularly publishes articles on your topic then you can often set up an alert to receive an email listing the latest contents. See Section 9: Keeping Up to Date. 6.2 Finding Journals To see which journals are stocked by the Library, you need to find out which journals are available, both in print and electronically. Using Journal Finder Go to LibGuides and select the ‘Finding Journals by Title’ tab, scroll down to Journal Finder. Type the name of the journal that you are searching for into the Journal name box. You can choose from the drop down box if the name you have entered is an exact match, if it is a keyword contained within the journal title or if it is what the journal name begins with. If you know the date you are looking for you can enter this into the Year box. Then click on Go to start the search and you will be taken to another screen*: You can either click on Go here to go to the journal’s web site and view the journal electronically Or you can Click on Go here to check The Catalogue for print journals *Sometimes if there are other journals with a similar name you will first be shown a list of possible matches to choose from. Checking for print journals Under the heading “Is a print copy available?” click Go. You will be directed to the information about the journal on the library catalogue. Click the Check Availability link to see whether you can access the volume/date that you require. Location and shelfmark indicate a print journal Library has all issues of print version from 1987 onwards. Issues before 1997 are held in store and need to be requested for collection. Location Web Site indicates an e-journal. Click on ‘Connect to ejournal’ in he record. You need to interpret the holdings information carefully. The location, Middlesbrough Campus, means that the journal is held in printed form in the Library. Printed journals are given shelfmarks in the same way as books, but prefixed with a ‘J’. Journal shelfmarks tend to be shorter than those of many books, because they are usually classified into broader subject areas. So a book on active learning in higher education will be shelved at 378.12 and the journal Active Learning in Higher Education is shelved at J378. As with books, journals with the same shelfmarks are kept together on the shelves. There can be many journals at the same shelfmark. To help you find particular journals, those at the same shelfmark are arranged in alphabetical order by journal title. In the Library, printed journals are arranged on Floor 3. Printed journals are not available for loan. Most e-journals (and online databases) require you to enter a password when you are accessing them off-campus. This is usually your ICT username and password. Task: Finding Journals Q1 At which shelfmark would you find the Animation Magazine in the Library? Q2 What is the earliest year of the journal British Journal of Educational Psychology that the University has access to electronically? 6.3 Understanding a Journal Reference Journals are collected into numbered volumes, usually one for each year. To find a particular journal article you would need to know the full reference, which usually includes: the title of the journal, the year it was published and its volume number the name and initials of the article’s author the title of the article A journal article reference will usually look something like this: Authors of article, surname and first letters of forenames Date of publication Title of article Senecal, C., Koestner, R. and Vallerand, R.J. (1995) ‘Self-regulation and academic procrastination’, Journal of Social Psychology, 135(5), pp. 607-619. Title of journal that contains the article (usually underlined or in italics) Page numbers in the issue of the journal Volume number and in brackets issue number of journal 6.4 Finding Journal Articles How you find journal articles depends on the information that you start with: Do you have the details of a particular journal article you are trying to find? Yes No ROUTE A: You need to search Journal Finder using the Name of the Journal. This is the easiest route and the one we will look at first. ROUTE B: How do you find an article without any details? We look at this in Section 6.6 of this workbook. 6.5 ROUTE A: Finding a journal article when you have a reference From the ‘Finding Journals by Title’ tab in LibGuides, scroll down to Journal Finder. When you are searching for an article, the more information you can include, the better, but the only piece of information that you need to have is the name of the journal. If you have the exact name and the details of the year that the article was published, it is useful to enter these here. Then click on Go to start the search. The results screen (see below) shows that this journal is available electronically from 1975 onwards. If you have any additional information you can add the volume, issue and start page into the boxes. Finally, click Go to be taken to the article. Date the journal is available electronically from – in this case 1975 What you see next will depend on the publisher of the journal – in this example you are taken directly to the article and just need to click on the PDF full-text option to view the article: Task: Finding a Journal Article Q3 Find this article electronically: Younger, M. et al. (1999) The gender gap and classroom interactions: reality and rhetoric? British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20 (3), 325-341. Which University are the authors from? 6.6 ROUTE B: Finding journal articles on a topic When you need to find journal articles on a particular topic but do not already have the appropriate references, you need to use an information source that indexes the journals in your chosen subject area. This source will usually be in the form of an online database. Online databases can be accessed via the L&IS website using LibGuides. Choose a LibGuide from those listed to see the online databases recommended for your subject area. 1. Click the tab called ‘Finding Journal Articles’ Scroll down the page to look at the databases recommended for this subject area. It is very unlikely that just one online database will cover all of the information that you may need for your dissertation. To make sure that your search is comprehensive you need to search more than one database. 2. There are Factsheets and Tutorials to help you to use the databases 3. More information about the subject coverage of each database is provided by clicking on the button. 4. Click on the title of any of the databases listed to start searching Once your search is completed you should be automatically taken to the results screen. Some databases allow you to save the search results in folders. 6.7 Searching Specific Databases Some databases provide the full text of complete journal articles, which you could then print out or save. However, some only provide abstracts (summaries) and others just include very brief bibliographic references of the articles, which you will then need to look for using the Find it @ Tees link or the Journal Finder service. While some online databases will only index journal articles, many cover other materials as well e.g. conference papers, chapters of books, reports etc. Not all online databases cover journal articles; for example you will find online databases that specialise in images. You will find more information about other sources covered by online databases in Section 8: Other Sources. Task: Choosing Online Databases Try to identify 3 online databases that look like they would be worth searching. Jot down the reasons for your choice. There are no right or wrong answers but once you start to search the online databases you may find some cover your topic better than others. Database 1: Why? Database 2: Why? Database 3: Why? 6.8 Searching Online Databases The only way to become really comfortable with searching online databases is to practise. To help get you started there are factsheets and tutorials for some of the online databases – click on the factsheet or tutorial buttons next to its name. Task: Searching Online Databases Now choose one of the online databases from your list and find out how to search it either by looking at the factsheet or by doing the tutorial. Once you feel comfortable using your chosen online database, have a go at searching it using some of the searches you identified in Q5 of Section 3: Identify and Develop your Topic. Record the details of how many results you find etc on the form on the next page. If you find too many or too few results use the suggested strategies in Section 3.6 of this Workbook to develop your search. Name of database searched: Search Describe your search: (including search terms, any Boolean operators, phrase searching or other limits if applicable) Why did you choose this search? How many results? 1 2 3 Which was the most successful of these three searches? Why? How useful was this online database for your subject area? Comments: (e.g. how useful were the results of this search?) It’s useful to keep this kind of record for all the searching that you do. As you find useful journal articles note down or save all the details that you will require to find the item – (see example of a journal reference in Section 6.3). In addition keep a note of where you found the reference to the journal article, then if you’ve missed out any details you can go back and find them. You will need all of this information if you can’t find the journal article in the Library – See: Section 10: Getting hold of materials not stocked in the Library. If you get in the habit of recording the details of the items you find in the correct format it will save you lots of time later when you come to write the bibliography and references for your assignments. See RefWorks (http://tees.libguides.com/refworks) a tool that can help you to manage your references – see Section 12. 6.9 Cited References Each journal article that you find will usually have its own list of references – looking at these is another way to find journal articles on your topic. It may be that as you find more articles on your topic you’ll notice that a particular journal article is often cited by authors writing on the topic. If you do find an article that is frequently cited then you could try doing a “Cited Reference Search”. A few online databases will allow you to do this - examples include Scopus, Web of Knowledge and Medline. Doing this kind of search will bring back a list of all of the other journal articles that cite the same article; this may help you to find other journal articles and can give you some indication of how important a particular journal article is. You normally do this kind of search by searching first for the article and then linking to a list of other journal articles that cite it in their bibliographies: Example from Scopus – click here to find a list of articles that cite this article To find out more about doing this look at the online help available from the online database you are using. 6.10 Some Tips for Searching Online Databases If the database does not provide the full text of the article, click on the blue button to see if it is available electronically from another source. Finding the right keywords to describe your search is the key to how successful you will be. One way to help you find the right terms to search for is to find some articles on your subject, then look at the subject headings they have been given and read the abstracts. By doing this you might discover some alternative words you could search for. Keep a record of where you searched, what keywords you used and how successful you felt it was. By doing this you start to build up an idea of what works and what doesn’t, saving yourself time in the long run. Use the Help screens; a few seconds looking at these can save you loads of time later. If you find nothing on your subject - ask for help. Your tutor and the librarians for your subject area may be able to suggest alternative sources that you hadn’t thought of. Plus just talking through what you are trying to do can sometimes help to clarify your ideas. Some Common Misconceptions Some students believe that if there is no link to full text in the online database then the article isn’t available in the Library – check - it may be. Some students think that everything that they find searching an online database is available in the Library. In fact we don’t own everything indexed by online databases. For information about obtaining items not owned by the Library see: Section 10: Getting hold of materials not stocked in the Library.