Searching for scholarly, original research articles

by Tina Hovekamp

 

I. Generating ideas for a psychology related research project

 
To help your selection of a psychology related research topic, you may browse the articles published in the Annual Review of Psychology, second floor of the library, call number BF30.A56. This is an excellent multivolume series which includes articles reviewing research literature on wide a variety of psychology topics.

Besides the paper volumes in our library, you may also access the Annual Review of Psychology through the web and view the tables of contents of this publication for each year (you can even read the abstracts of the articles included) at:  http://psych.annualreviews.org/contents-by-date.0.shtml.

II. Making the distinction between magazines vs journals

 

  vs.

 

Popular magazines and scholarly journals have different purposes and different audiences.

In case you are confused about the distinction between magazines versus journals, here are some clues you can use to determine the type of a publication you are dealing with:

Popular Magazine                                                           Scholarly Journals

geared to laymen, nonprofessionals                            geared to researchers, professionals

articles written by staff, sometimes unsigned              articles written by researchers and experts

discuss current events, issues of general interest       report primary research results

no bibliographies at the end of articles                         bibliographies at the end of articles

advertisements                                                                no advertisements

color pictures                                                                   statistical tables, diagrams

 

III. Making the distinction between original research vs report/review articles

 

bluesquare.gif (59 bytes)   Original research articles include operational methodology, which means a procedure reported in enough detail to be followed like a recipe by other researches, and an analysis and discussion of data gathered by the researcher(s)/author(s) of the articles.  Original research articles nearly always follow a standard format which includes:

Abstract
Introduction or Literature Review
Methods
Results
Discussion/Conclusion
Bibliography/References

 bluesquare.gif (59 bytes)   Review/report articles are different from original research articles, providing overviews or reports on different topics and synthesizing information gathered from other, sometimes original research sources.   Remember the Annual Review of Psychology I mentioned earlier?  This publication is a very good example of what is considered review periodical literature.  Although the articles included are "research" articles, they are however reports based on other scientists' original publications as described above.

 

Now compare example 1 vs. example 2

 

IV. Locating articles

Go to the COCC Barber Library web page.

Look for this pull down menu:

Articles & More: Databases

Pull down the menu, select Social Science  and then the database Academic Search Elite. This database is a general academic database and provides full text access to periodical articles (magazines and journals).

Database Search Hints

  • start with keyword searching 

  • use * to locate endings to words (truncation)

  • use boolean commands (AND, OR)

  • Limit your search to "Scholarly Publications/Peer Reviewed."  You may also limit your results to to "Full Text", if you are interested in getting only those articles available full-text through this database.

  • Also optional, in the "Magazine" box, you may enter "psychology" as one of the required words in the name of the periodicals searched.

        EXAMPLE:

  • full text articles may be e-mailed, downloaded, or printed from the screen.

  • other articles may be located in the COCC or may be ordered via inter-library loan.

Still having questions or need help?  Call me (Tina) at 383-7295 or email me at thovekamp@cocc.edu

Tina Hovekamp, updated 9/2008