Library Resources for NSCI 306

Finding journals published for your subject area

Still need help? Contact the librarian

Finding journals published for your subject area

What journals does Pfau Library have online in your subject area?
Go to the Online Journals List. Use the option to "Browse Journals by Subject." You must select one of the general subject areas. The general subjects are then broken down into narrower subtopics. (Example: Education will be found under "Social and Behavioral Sciences.") Keep clicking on subtopics until you get a list of journal titles for that topic.

What journals does Pfau Library have in print in your subject area?
Go to the Pfau Library Catalog: Advanced Search. Do a search using a broad keyword that describes your topic, for example: organic chemistry Then scroll down to "Select Collection" and choose Journals/Magazines.

Does Pfau Library have the specific journal you are looking for?
If you already know which journal title you need, and you want to see if we have it, use the Pfau Library Catalog: Journal/Magazine Search.

What journals are published in your subject area, regardless of whether Pfau Library has them?
Options:

Go to the Serials Directory. Use a broad, general keyword, such as nursing, to describe your subject area or discipline. The list of results will be journals that mention that keyword in some way. The Serials Directory gives basic information about each journal.
Look up your subject in the guidebook Magazines for Libraries, which lists all the major journals published for specific disciplines. This guide is not available online! Ask for it at the Pfau Library Reference Desk.

For your specific journal, what are the subscription costs, intended audience, etc.; and is it peer reviewed (scholarly)?
Options:

Type your journal title into the Serials Directory. Click on the title from the list of results to view basic background information about the journal.
Many of Pfau Library's online journals (especially science journals) have a "journal home page" which will give you basic information about the journal. If your journal is online in one of the library's science databases, such as ScienceDirect, Wiley Interscience, Springer, ACS, ACM, IEEE Computer Society, or Scitation, it should have a homepage available within one or two clicks.
Look for the journal's home page on the web (try typing the journal title into Google).
Examine a paper copy of the journal (especially the inside front and back covers).

Other tips for discovering journals in your field:

Ask an expert, such as a professor or a friend who works in the field you are studying. Find out what journals they read to keep current.
Do a keyword search for your topic in one of the library's databases. Pay attention to the journal titles for any interesting articles you find. Then investigate those journals.
Check out the web sites of any professional organizations in your field. See if they publish or recommend any journals.

Finding research articles

How do I find articles?

To find research articles, begin with one of Pfau Library's online databases. Away from campus, you'll be asked to log-in with your Coyote ID number.

If your subject is in the natural sciences, try choosing a database from this guide: Databases by Subject: Natural Sciences. If your subject is in some other area, try Databases by Subject: General/All Topics or one of the other subject guides.

For a complete list of the library's databases, go to the All Databases page.

Many library databases require the use of Boolean logic for searching. Basically, that means you must pick the most important words (keywords) describing your topic, then combine your keywords with the Boolean operator and. For more information and examples see Keyword Search Strategies for Library Databases (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader). Or, see the OLLIE tutorials: Choosing Keywords and Advanced Online Searching.

What is a research article?

For this course, you must find articles of original, empirical research. Much original research is quantitative, meaning that it produces numerical results that can be analyzed statistically. Common methods for quantitative research are experimentation and survey research. If you choose a topic that does not involve something quantifiable, you probably will not be able to complete the assignment!

Sample topic: damage caused by hurricanes
This topic is NOT quantifiable. While it is interesting and worthy of investigation, it is impossible to construct an experiment around it or to study it under controlled conditions. At best, you could simply described types of hurricane damage that have been observed in the past. Notice also that this topic is "mushy" and poorly defined: What kind of damage--wind, water, loss of life, economic disruption?
Sample topic: what are the characteristics of buildings that resist wind damage by hurricanes?
This topic IS quantifiable. It is possible to create models of different types of buildings and compare how they respond to wind conditions generated in a laboratory. It is possible to collect data about the engineering characteristics of actual buildings that survived hurricane damage.

Quantitative research in the natural sciences usually focuses on physical phenomena, but other kinds of factors can be studied quantitatively (for example, by taking a survey about people's attitudes or beliefs, or by comparing test scores of students exposed to different types of classroom instruction).

Characteristics of quantitative research articles:

statement of purpose (what was being studied and why)
description of the design and/or method of the study (experimental group, control, variables, number of test subjects, test conditions, etc.)
results, or report of the findings (usually in numeric form, tables, or graphs, often with statistical analysis)
conclusions that can be drawn from the results
footnotes, a bibliography, and author credentials

Take a look at the abstracts of these articles to get an idea of what a quantitative research article is like:

Do not be fooled by news reports of research studies! A news article will simply summarize the interesting points of a study. A primary research article is always written by the people who actually conducted the original study.

A meta analysis takes the results of several existing studies and analyzes them in a new way. Meta analysis looks for previously unnoticed patterns or trends among existing study results, or seeks to pull out new data from them. Meta analysis is usually (but not always!) considered another form of quantitative research.

A literature review is an article whose sole purpose is to provide an overview of previous important research on a particular topic. Although helpful to researchers, literature reviews are not empirical research. Almost every empirical research article begins with one or two paragraphs looking at prior research on the same subject, in order to place the new study into context. But in a pure literature review, no new study is conducted.

This page maintained by Stacy Magedanz
Last updated June 26, 2007

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