Tag: APA PsycArticles

New Thesaurus Terms for Searching APA PsycInfo (Winter 2022)

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students
APA PsycInfo: The premier abstracting and indexing resource for behavioral and social science research

In January, APA added 44 new terms to its Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® to provide more effective searching on current topics, including sport and exercise psychology, psychological testing, mental health, and COVID-19. This update, which includes 27 new cross-referenced terms and 22 revised scope notes, brings the total number of index terms in the Thesaurus to more than 10,000.

In order to provide current and accurate search terminology for emerging research, the winter update will be followed by two additional Thesaurus updates in 2022 — one in the spring (May) and another in the fall. New terms from the winter and spring updates will be applied to current content only, but the majority of postable terms new for 2022 will be back-mapped to older records following the fall release.

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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.

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

Tutorial Tuesday: How (and Why) to use the APA Thesaurus on APA PsycNET

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

It’s Tutorial Tuesday! In this series, we explore APA’s library of video tutorials available on the PsycINFO® YouTube channel and the APA Style CENTRAL® 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.

We recently updated one of our tutorials: How (and Why) to Use the APA Thesaurus on APA PsycNET®.""

How can you be sure you are finding the best results for your search?

By using the best search terms! The APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms (“APA Thesaurus”) contains the controlled vocabulary that APA uses to describe and categorize all content indexed in PsycINFO. This resource is regularly updated to include new and changing terminology for topics in the behavioral sciences, and you can put it to work for you!

Using the APA Thesaurus helps you eliminate “noise” from your search and retrieve the most relevant results by revealing the best search terms for your topic. The APA Thesaurus is a valuable tool for students new to research or any researcher who is new to a topic area and may not yet know the best terminology for searching.

This brief video (2:40 minutes) demonstrates the benefits of using the APA Thesaurus when searching databases on the APA PsycNET platform, and includes:

  • Examples of recent terminology updates to the APA Thesaurus;
  • How to access the APA Thesaurus when crafting a search;
  • Using the APA Thesaurus to find related terms for narrowing or expanding your search;
  • Discovering index terms for broader concepts that encompass your research topic and make searching more efficient; and
  • Uncovering additional search terms you may not have considered.

This tutorial is a great resource to link from a LibGuide or course module for any class working with APA Databases on APA PsycNET, and can be helpful in answering email or chat reference questions.

The previous version of this tutorial will remain available, but if you have embedded or linked to it anywhere, we encourage you to update your materials with the link to this new version.

Related Resources: