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APA
JOURNALS AT NEWARK-HARD COPY
Current
issues of popular periodicals are shelved along the West wall of the library
alphabetically by title from A to Z. However,
the scholarly/professional journals are shelved in the periodicals section of
the library as they come in. That section is also shelved alphabetically by
title. All periodical holdings are shown in the Newark
Campus Periodicals List.
Entries that show a date consisting of a year followed by a dash (1988- )
indicate that the library holds that periodical from 1988 to the present time.
A
complete list of all the APA journals can be found in the Publication
Manual of the American Psychological Association-it is shelved in the reference section at REF NWK BF76.7 P83 1994.
The publication manual is also the definitive guide to writing style and
bibliographic citation in psychology journals; the library can supply students
with a very abbreviated version of it, and that version is also available
online. (To find it, follow the
link Instructional Guides and Publications
on the Libraries’ homepage and on the next page click on Citation
Style Guides.)
These are the APA journals held by the OSUN library:
American Psychologist 1962-
Articles on current issues in psychology; also empirical and theoretical articles on broad aspects of psychology.
Contemporary Psychology 1994-1998
Critical reviews of books and other media relevant to psychology. Note that this journal does not publish empirical studies.
Developmental
Psychology
1971-
Publishes articles that deal with human development across the life span. Articles may deal with species other than humans. Empirical articles, occasionally scholarly reviews, theoretical articles and social policy papers.
Health Psychology
1995-1997
The major type of article solicited for this journal is the report of empirical research intended to further
an understanding of scientific relationships between behavioral principles and physical health and illness.
Journal of
Abnormal Psychology
1962-
Basic research and theory in the field of abnormal behavior; experimental studies may deal with animal subjects. Articles deal with descriptive pathology rather than diagnosis and treatment of abnormal behavior.
Journal of
Consulting & Clinical Psychology
1997-
Publishes articles on the diagnosis and treatment of abnormal behavior; articles may be studies of gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation or may focus on populations of clinical interest such as hospitals or prisons.
Journal of
Educational Psychology
1996-
Original research dealing with learning and cognition, social and emotional processes and human development; articles pertain to all levels of education.
Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General
1975-
Articles of interest to the entire community of experimental psychologists.
Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition
1982-
Original experimental studies on learning, memory problem solving thinking, reading and language processing. Emphasizes empirical studies; may include reviews and theoretical commentary.
Journal of
Personality & Social Psychology
1965-
Articles in all areas of personality and social psychology; emphasizes empirical reports.
Psychological Bulletin 1962-
Publishes reviews and interpretations of issues in psychology-does not publish original research or original theoretical articles.
Psychological Review 1962-
Theoretical articles related to any area of psychology; surveys of the literature are not ordinarily published.
Psychology &
Aging
1986-
Articles on adult development and aging; emphasis is on original research.
Some assignments involving use of the APA journals are not specific enough to warrant using an index; if any article will do, students can locate a journal, select an article and either photocopy it or check out the journal. If the assignment is to find an empirical study (an article describing original research), the student needs to look for articles in which the authors explain their methodology; such articles are definitely describing or reporting original research. This section may describe how participants in the study were selected, what testing instruments or materials were used, or what sequence of tasks or events comprised the test. In APA journals, it will be a paragraph or a series of paragraphs labeled “Method”.
Sometimes professors will require their students to use only articles from refereed or peer reviewed journals. All the APA primary journals are peer-reviewed. The status of journals other than those published by the APA may be verified by looking up the entry for the journal in Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory; at the end of the entry the user will find, in italics, the notation Refereed Serial. Another source of this information is the book Magazines for Libraries; the student should look up the journal in the title index, get the number for the main entry, and look for the notation “Refereed” in the first section of the entry. Almost all libraries will have both of these books; ask for them at the reference desk. Ulrich’s may also be accessed online; follow the By Title link on the Libraries’ homepage.
Online and hard copy indexes can be used for more specific assignments (language acquisition in toddlers; well being, the effects of divorce on adolescents). The major tool for gaining access to information sources in psychology is PsychINFO, which indexes journal articles, chapters in books, Ph.D. dissertations, and other sources of information in psychology. (The hard copy version is entitled Psychological Abstracts; some libraries will have a CD-ROM version known as PsychLIT.) To find the database, start at the OSU Libraries’ Homepage (http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu), under Other Online Research Tools click on By Title , then on the letter P in the alphabet at the top of the next screen, scroll down to find PsychINFO (1967 to present), and click on that link to get a search screen. Searches in this database can be limited so that results will include only citations to and abstracts of journal articles. They can also be tailored to cover only a specific time period, or to retrieve only records for articles in English. For detailed searching instructions, ask one of the library staff for a copy of the handout “Guide to OhioLINK Research Databases”.
Other databases that index psychology journals are Academic Search Premier, Education Abstracts, ERIC, and the hard copy of PsychINFO which is called Psychological Abstracts. All of them can be accessed from the Libraries’ homepage by following the steps outlined in the previous paragraph. One important factor in deciding to use an online source will be that some articles, although available full-text from the database, will not print a version that includes charts, graphs and other illustrations, which are frequently very important in research articles.
Students who elect to do a search in PsychINFO should begin with the book called Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms. Subject searches yield very focused results, so verifying the correct index terms and related headings will save time. If the user knows that Well Being, Quality of Life and Life Satisfaction are all correct subject terms and are virtually synonymous, she can construct a carefully focused search that will pick up all the relevant articles. The Thesaurus is found on the first index table in the Reference section; its call number is REF NWK Z695.1 P7 T5 2001.
11/22/02