Author: Marta Soto

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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From the Deck of … MLA ’18 Sunrise Seminar

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Librarians

Welcome to “From the Deck of . . .” an irregular series in which we highlight search demos and other information from the slide decks we create for our live training sessions. You can view and download these materials from the PsycINFO SlideShare account.

At the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting earlier this month, we presented a Sunrise Seminar training session. This session focused on searchable fields in PsycINFO® that are especially relevant to medical & health fields, including:

  • first postings
  • NLM Title abbreviation
  • PMID
  • MeSH
  • grants / sponsorships
  • methodology

We also demonstrated how the APA Style CENTRAL® Writing Center can assist with teaching or writing your own meta-analysis, including:

  • choosing a paper template
  • managing the reference list
  • creating and importing tables


You can review the slides from our MLA 2018 Sunrise Seminar on our SlideShare account.

You can also view just the slides about APA Style CENTRAL.

 

Related Resources:

Blog post – Online First Publications
Blog post – What’s a PMID?
Blog post – Grants & Sponsorships
Tutorial – The Meta-Analysis Template

Interactive Site for New APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards

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

The APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (APA Style JARS) provide researchers in psychology with a structured guide to communicate important aspects of their research. Created by psychologists, the standards aim to enhance the quality of published research by promoting transparency and facilitating the assessment of rigor.

In January 2018, APA released an update to the standards, which now include guidance on reporting qualitative and mixed methods research as well as revised guidelines for quantitative research.

In early May, APA launched a brand-new companion website for APA Style JARS that provides tools for students, authors, reviewers, and editors, including:

  • the latest news and frequently asked questions
  • checklists to facilitate the reporting process
  • an informational video
  • training and tutorials

This companion site will help students, researchers, and educators throughout the research process, enabling authors to more thoroughly and accurately communicate their research, increasing opportunities for funding, collaboration, and replication. In addition, the website should make it easier for researchers to publish in APA journals, which in turn provides readers with information that is more accessible and easily understood.

 

Related Resources:

APA Press Release – the New JARS

APA Press Release – New Website Guides Users of JARS

APA Style Blog – The Updated APA Style JARS

Webinar Alert: PsycINFO Sessions for Students & Faculty – May 2-4, 2018

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Librarians

Our next series of PsycINFO® webinars for students and faculty will run on May 2, 3, 4 from 11 – 11:30 a.m. EST. The sessions may be attended separately, but we encourage those who are interested to take all three, so we offer them on consecutive days:

We will provide information relevant to all search platforms including APA PsycNET®, EBSCOhost, Ovid, and ProQuest. The platform demonstrated will be based on the needs of the attendees of each session. For more information on this series, including full descriptions, please visit our databases webinar training for students and faculty web page.

These webinars are an ideal way for students to get a refresher on PsycINFO if they have had a previous training session. Please help us spread the word to interested students and faculty!