Tag: APA PsycNet

Tutorial Thursday – How to Format a Citation in APA Style using APA PsycNET

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

It’s Tutorial Thursday! In this series, we explore APA’s library of video tutorials available on the APA Publishing Training YouTube channel. Please feel free to link to or embed our videos in your library websites or LibGuides, course management systems, or other locations where students, faculty, and researchers will find them.

A new version of the tutorial How to Format a Citation in APA Style using APA PsycNET is available.

In this short video  you’ll learn how to access APA style citations for items in APA PsycNET.

By the end of this video you will be able to:

  • Access an APA style citation for a result from an APA PsycNET search
  • Explain why it is important to double-check the citation that is found
  • Describe when it is valuable to use a citation management tool

Related Resource: How to Export Citations to Citation Management Tools from APA PsycNET

New Terms & Other Updates to the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms®

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Librarians

We recently released an update to the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms. The Thesaurus provides precise and consistent terminology for searching all APA research databases. We added 305 new “preferred” Index Terms and approximately 70 new non-postable or “use” references*.

Each item in the APA databases – journal articles, books and book chapters, dissertations, and more – is represented by a record that is indexed, or tagged, with Index Terms from the Thesaurus. The use of a controlled vocabulary allows someone searching a database to quickly find all items about a specific concept — such as Animal Behavior, Marginalized Groups, or Prescription Drug Misuse — no matter what terminology or keywords the authors used. 

Reflecting emerging areas, technologies, and social issues as well as changing nomenclature, this updated vocabulary will provide users with more targeted and efficient search and discovery. Additionally, we added new terminology in the expanding areas of psychological assessment, psychometrics, and research methods. You can view more details on our web page, What’s New in the 2019 Update, including a link to the full list of new and updated Index Terms (PDF, 135KB).

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HTTPS Support for APA PsycNET beginning January 17

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Librarians

On January 17, 2019, the APA PsycNET platform will be upgraded to HTTPS. This enhancement provides our customers with improved security, and current platform users should not see any changes in functionality.

Although APA will implement a permanent redirect from HTTP to HTTPS, institutional subscribers using a proxy solution may need to adjust their configurations to ensure continued access to the APA PsycNET platform. All users should update links or shortcuts to reflect the HTTPS protocol.

What You Need to Know
The move to HTTPS will require about an hour of downtime on January 17, 2019 during which the APA PsycNET platform will be unavailable. Details about this maintenance window will be posted on the platform approximately one week ahead of the release.

To transition your institutional logos for co-branding, move the files for your institutional logo, link resolver, and/or ILL icons to a secure server and then update these image URLs in the APA PsycNET Admin Center (admincenter.apa.org).

The stanza for EZproxy and information about WAM configuration are included below. If you need additional assistance, please visit the Proxy Server Configuration page on the APA PsycNET Help site or contact us.

EZProxy Configuration
If your library uses EZProxy for authentication, it will require an SSL Configuration. Below is the updated stanza for APA PsycNET:

Title APA PsycNET (updated 20190117)
URL https://psycnet.apa.org
HJ content.apa.org
HJ doi.apa.org
HJ my.apa.org
HJ proxies.apa.org
HJ psycinfo.com
HJ psycnet.apa.org
HJ psyctherapy.apa.org
HJ psyctherapyalpha.apa.org
HJ search.apa.org
HJ www.apa.org
HJ www.psycinfo.com
HJ https://psyctherapy.apa.org
HJ https://psyctherapyalpha.apa.org/
DJ apa.org
DJ psycinfo.com

Configuring Web Access Management (WAM)
If your library uses WAM, please  coordinate with your campus IT department to ensure your proxy has access to a security certificate. Note that your security certificate must include your proxy URL, which may be different from your campus website address. For WAM configuration, please use the following APA PsycNET URL: https://psycnet.apa.org.

PsycINFO Expert Tip: Searching by Date on APA PsycNET

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians

PsycINFO® records have several date fields that provide information about the creation of the scholarly work and information about the creation of the PsycINFO record in the APA database. In this post, we’ll explain what these different dates mean and how you can use them in your search.

What do all these different dates mean?

The Publication Date is the date that the journal article or book chapter was delivered or made available to customers or subscribers. For journal articles, you may also see Publication History dates –  First Submitted, Revised, and First Posting.

The Release Date is the date that the record was added to the PsycINFO database. You may also see a Correction Date in some records that were updated after the release date.

Usually, the publication date is only a few weeks before the release date on PsycINFO. But sometimes, material published at an earlier date, such as older issues of a journal, will be added to PsycINFO. 

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PsycINFO Expert Tip: Search Alerts & PsycALERTS

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Librarians

If you’re working on a long-term research project, one of your first steps may be a review of the literature. You’ll spend some time picking your best search terms, creating a search query, and identifying journals that are a close fit with your topic. As you move into the data gathering and writing stages, you’ll still want to keep an eye on new publications in your area.

Or if you are an instructor or practitioner, even though your formal schooling is completed, you want to make sure you continue learning about new discoveries in your field of expertise.

Setting up a search alert helps you efficiently keep up with scholarly publications that meet your criteria as they are added to PsycINFO®. There are three types of search alerts you can set up on APA PsycNET®: Topic Alerts, Citation Alerts, and New Publication Alerts. Together, these are called PsycALERTS®.

This post explains in detail how PsycALERTS work on APA PsycNET. If you access PsycINFO® on EBSCOhost, ProQuest, or Ovid, these platforms have free personal accounts and search alert tools that serve the same purpose. It’s best to get the alerts from the same platform that you use to access PsycINFO, so you can easily find the full-text at your institution.

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