Category: For Students

Tutorial Thursday: How to Find DOIs in APA PsycINFO

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Librarians, For Students

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

When we look at the most frequently watched videos on the PsycINFO® YouTube channel, there’s one video that’s always in the top ten most-watched tutorials: “How to Find DOIs in APA PsycINFO.”

Screenshot of How to Find DOIs in APA PsycINFO tutorial.

The tutorial defines Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and explores how to find them in PsycINFO on the APA PsycNET, EBSCOhost, Ovid, and ProQuest platforms. It also points out where to look for them on full-text PDFs, and demonstrates CrossRef’s DOI lookup tool.

Since DOIs figure prominently in properly formatted APA Style® references, this video has been linked from our APA Style help resources, and from many library and writing center webpages as well. It’s a popular video that’s been watched more than 89,000 times since it was uploaded in November 2009.

Six years is a long time in the life of a tutorial like this one, and earlier this year we decided it was time to refresh this video. You can find the new version of this tutorial on the PsycINFO YouTube channel, and we’re working to update links on the APA websites.

The old version won’t appear when you visit our YouTube Channel, but we haven’t deleted it, so links to it will still work. We can’t automatically direct users to the updated version, but we’ve edited the video title and description to point users to the new version. If you’ve embedded this tutorial in a webpage and would like to update it, simply follow any link from this post to the new version.

Related Resources:

Webinar Alert: PsycINFO Sessions for Students & Faculty April 13-15

Posted on by Customer Relations Staff in For Faculty, For Librarians, For Students

Our next series of PsycINFO® webinars for students and faculty will run on April 13, 14, and 15 from 11 – 11:30 a.m. (EDT). The sessions may be taken separately, but we encourage those who are interested to take all three, and offer them on consecutive days:

We will provide information relevant to all search platforms including APA PsycNET, EBSCOhost, Ovid, and ProQuest. The platform used will be based on the needs of the attendees of each session. For more information on this series, including full descriptions, please visit our website.

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

Introducing the PsycCRITIQUES Spotlight

Posted on by Customer Relations Staff in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

PsycCRITIQUES® is APA’s database of reviews of psychology related books, films, and videos. These reviews are ideal for instructors in need of classroom activities and readings, librarians responsible for collection development, and practitioners looking to keep current.

Screenshot of Highlights in Psychological Research webpageFor several years, the editors of PsycCRITIQUES maintained a blog, where they discussed the topics raised in the books being reviewed. The blog now has a new format – PsycCRITIQUES Spotlight – and a new home with our Highlights in Psychological Research.

In addition to the PsycCRITIQUES Spotlight, our Highlights in Psychological Research include the APA Journals Article Spotlight™ and Particularly Exciting Experiments in Psychology™ (PeePs). These look at the latest research from APA Journals; Article Spotlights through the lens of a single article, and PeePs explore trends in recent publications. Finally, the APA Journals Dialogue podcast connects listeners with authors, who discuss the findings from recent research, and implications for further work.

Highlights in Psychological Research are rich source of information. They’re a useful tool for anyone looking to keep current with new developments in behavioral sciences research. They can also be used by students and instructors when brainstorming topics for assignments, and by librarians who need fresh ideas for search examples.

Related Resources:
Visit the PsycINFO YouTube channel to watch a brief video exploring PsycCRITIQUES.

Webinar Alert: PsycINFO Sessions for Students & Faculty March 23 – 25

Posted on by Customer Relations Staff in For Faculty, For Librarians, For Students

Our next series of PsycINFO® webinars for students and faculty will run on March 23, 24, and 25 from 11 – 11:30 a.m. (EDT). The sessions may be taken separately, but we encourage those who are interested to take all three, and offer them on consecutive days:

We will provide information relevant to all search platforms including APA PsycNET, EBSCOhost, Ovid, and ProQuest. The platform used will be based on the needs of the attendees of each session. For more information on this series, including full descriptions, please visit our website.

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

PsycINFO Expert Tip: Find Items Added to PsycINFO During a Specific Timeframe

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

Recently, we reviewed how to edit a search alert in order to incorporate recent changes to the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms®, which was updated in December. In our example, we updated a search that included an Index Term that’s no longer being used to tag records in PsycINFO®: Aspergers Syndrome.

Screenshot of release date on a record on APA PsycNET

This article was added to PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES® on November 2, 2015.

We add records about new articles, book chapters, and dissertations to PsycINFO twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. Every item in an APA database includes the specific date it was added to that database. On APA PsycNET®, this is called the Release Date. It’s formatted in year-month-day order, with no spaces, hyphens, or slashes. For example: 20151214 or 20160201.

You can use this information to create a search that will retrieve results that were added to the database in a specific timeframe. With this technique, you can create a search that will find all the records added to PsycINFO from the date that this Index Term was changed, until the date that you changed your search alert.

We have put together a set of slides that demonstrate how to search by the release date on APA PsycNET, EBSCOhost, Ovid and ProQuest. If you are affiliated with a college or university, you can ask a librarian for assistance with this process. Subscribers to APA PsycNET Gold, Gold Plus, and Platinum packages can contact APA Databases & Electronic Resources Customer Relations at psycinfo@apa.org or 800-374-2722.