7.  TYPES OF PERIODICALS

There are 5 types of periodicals:


1) Scholarly and Research Journals
2) Professional Magazines and Journals
3) Magazines and Journals of Commentary and Opinion
4) Popular Magazines and News Magazines
5) Newspapers


Let’s examine each.

·                              Scholarly and Research Journals – specialized publications intended for scholars and students of a particular discipline or subject.  Usually published monthly or quarterly, these publications often have words such as these in their title:

 Studies in
 Review
 Annals
 Quarterly

 Journal
 Advances

Here are some examples of scholarly journal titles:

        Studies in European History
          American Historical Review
          Annals of Internal Medicine
          Quarterly Review of Film Studies
          Journal of the American Medical Association
          Advances in Biochemistry


CAUTION: A periodical that has the word “journal” in its title is not necessarily a scholarly journal.  For example, Ladies Home Journal is not a scholarly journal, even though the term appears in its title.



Articles in scholarly journals are written by highly educated people (often holding Master’s or PhD degrees) who are often experts, practitioners and teachers in specialized academic fields.  They write articles as a way to communicate with other scholars and add to the knowledge base of their discipline, always carefully citing their sources in footnotes and/or bibliographies. Often, they are reporting the results of original research or experimentation. 

Many scholarly journals will not publish an article until it has been reviewed by an editorial board to insure that it meets certain standards of scholarly quality.  A publication that requires this formal review is known as a refereed journal, and sometimes teachers will require you to find articles from such journals.  (Another term for refereed journal is peer-reviewed journal.  “Peer-reviewed” implies that one’s scholarly peers review your work.  Both terms mean the same thing.)

Articles in scholarly publications can be challenging to read because they’re not usually intended for the general public or those unfamiliar with the subject.

Journal of Health Policy, Politics, and Law -- a scholarly journal

·                                Professional Magazines and Journals – publications that report on news and developments in a particular profession, academic field, trade, or industry.  Unlike scholarly journals, they do not publish original research.  Instead, they concentrate on news and trends in a particular profession or industry.  Examples include:


                American Psychologist  (covers the psychology profession)
                American Music Teacher  (covers the music teaching profession)
                Legal Assistant Today  (covers the legal assistant profession)
                Automotive News  (covers the automotive industry)
                PC Week  (covers the computing industry)
                   Paper Trade Journal  (covers a specific trade)                 
 
                   
The American Journalism Review –a professional journal

·                                Magazines and Journals of Commentary and Opinion – offer analysis, commentary, and investigative reporting on social and political issues.  These publications typically view the world from either a politically liberal, moderate, or conservative stance.  They sometimes serve as the official “voice” of an activist organization.  Examples include:

·                                Popular Magazines and News Magazines -- commercial publications intended for the general reader.

Popular magazines focus on popular culture, i.e. entertainment, cultural trends, sports, hobbies, etc. 

News magazines report on national and international current events, social and political trends, public opinion, and popular culture.  They often offer valuable explanations and interpretations of events both at home and abroad.


                            
Vibe -- a popular magazine

        Newsweek -- a news magazine

·                              Newspapers – daily publications that provide local, national, and international news, editorials, entertainment, advertising and other sorts of practical information.

    Wall Street Journal -- a newspaper

8.  PERIODICAL DATABASES

More than 165,000 periodicals are published worldwide.  Given this vast number of magazines, journals, and newspapers, how do you find articles on your topic?

The key to finding periodical articles is to search a periodical database. (A periodical database is a type of Web database.)  They provide articles published in selected magazines, journals, and/or newspapers during a specified time period.  Therefore, just as you can use an online catalog to look up books on a topic, you can use a periodical database to find articles on a topic. 

No single periodical database covers all the periodicals being published.  Instead, a periodical database lists articles from a specific set of periodicals, on specific subjects, for a specified time period. This is what’s called the scope of a database.   Before using a database, it’s always a good idea to learn its scope.  What subject(s) does it cover?  What periodicals are indexed?  For what time period? 

Many periodical databases offer the full-text of some or all of the articles listed.  (“Full-text” means the entire content of the article is there for you to display on the screen, print, download, or email.)  This is a very convenient feature since it makes finding the actual paper copy of the publication unnecessary. If the full-text is not available, most indexes will offer an abstract (summary) with the citation.

Even though periodical databases have become a standard tool in research, it is good to know when you might need to use print periodical indexes.  In general, no periodical database includes articles published before 1980.  Therefore, if you are researching a topic that was in the news or widely discussed prior to 1980, your best choice would be a print index.  For example, if you wanted a magazine article describing the moon landing written at the time it occurred (1969), you would have to consult a print index.

Periodical databases are produced and sold by commercial publishers and used nationwide. In other words, a periodical database is not based on a particular library’s collection of magazines and journals.  Finding a citation in a database does not necessarily mean that your library can provide the actual issue of the periodical.  You must find out if your library subscribes to that periodical.  (This is less crucial if you are using a full-text or partial full-text periodical database.)

Periodical databases can be divided into 2 categories:

General Periodical Databases:  provides articles published in scholarly, professional and opinion journals, news magazines, and popular magazines.  Covers a broad range of general interest topics – science, social science, humanities, technology, etc.  Gale PowerSearch is an example of a general periodical index.

Subject Periodical Databases:  provides articles published in scholarly and professional publications.  Covers one specific subject (e.g. art, education, or biology)  or one specific discipline (e.g. science, social science, etc.).  ProQuest Biology Journals and PubMed are examples of subject periodical databases.



9.  BOOLEAN LOGIC

A powerful method of searching periodical databases is keyword searching using Boolean logic. Named after George Boole, a 19th century British mathematician, Boolean logic allows you to use logical operators (sometimes called Boolean operators) to combine keywords. The 2 most common logical operators are OR and AND. Let’s examine each.

OR – instructs the computer to retrieve records containing any one or more of your search terms. Most commonly used to link together synonymous terms as a way to broaden your search.

For example, if you were looking for articles about college, you might decide that articles containing the synonymous term “university” might also be relevant. Therefore, you create the search statement “college OR university.” You are asking to see any article containing either the word “college,” OR the word “university,” OR both words. This search statement can be diagrammed as follows:

OR

COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY

* The 1st shaded circle represents all the records containing the word “college.”

* The 2nd shaded circle represents all the records containing the word “university.”

* The shaded overlap represents the records containing both words.

Using the Gale PowerSearch databases, here’s how the search translates into number of articles retrieved:

If you add more synonymous terms to your search statement, you will retrieve more records. (A simple rule to remember is “OR is MORE.”) Consider, for example, adding the term “campus” to your search statement:

COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY OR CAMPUS

With the addition of the 3rd search term, your search results increase significantly:

Now let’s look at the AND operator.

AND – instructs the computer to retrieve records that contain all of your search terms.

For example, you’re interested in articles that discuss the connections between crime and poverty. Therefore, you enter the search statement: “crime AND poverty,” which can be diagrammed as follows:

AND

POVERTY AND CRIME

* Records will be retrieved only if they contain BOTH the word “poverty” AND the word “crime,” as indicated by the shaded area.

* Notice that you do not retrieve records that contain only the word “poverty,” or only the word “crime.”

Again using the Gale PowerSearch databases, here are the search results. Notice how combining terms with AND dramatically reduces the final number of hits, since both words must be present in the records retrieved.

If you add an additional term, your search results will be reduced even further. For example, let’s add the term “gender”:

POVERTY AND CRIME AND GENDER

Your search results are now as follows:

To summarize the use of logical operators:

OR means “I want to see records that contain any one or more of the terms I enter. I don’t care which.” The use of OR will increase your search results.

AND means “I want to see records that contain all of the terms I enter. They all must be there somewhere in the record.” The use of AND will decrease your search results.

10.  ADVANCED SEARCH STRATEGY

Once you have developed a research question that has multiple concepts, you're ready to develop a search strategy so you can carry out effective searches. Let's use the following research question to illustrate how to use Boolean logic to carry out an advanced search:
"What is the effect of illegal immigration on the U.S. economy?"

Dividing a Research Question into Concepts

The first step in the process of developing a search strategy for a topic is to analyze the research question (or research topic) and break it down into main ideas or concepts.  Using the research question given above, notice that there are 3 concepts:

Concept #1:  illegal immigration
Concept #2:  U.S.
Concept #3:  economy

These are the three most prominent ideas within the research question.  Keep in mind that if you can only identify one concept, the topic is too broad. Conversely, a question containing more than three or four concepts is probably too narrowly worded.  Typically, you should be able to divide a research question into two or three (or occasionally four) concepts.

Breaking a research question (or research topic) into appropriate concepts can sometimes be a tricky process. A topic can often be divided into various combinations of concepts. Each concept should be stated as precisely and succinctly as possible and words that describe the relationship between concepts should not be included. Only the most significant words from the research question (or topic statement) are usually included as terms for one of the concepts. Words that are not essential in defining a concept (such as "what" and "effect" in our example) should not be included as terms.

Finding Synonymous or Related Terms for Each Concept

Once the topic has been broken into concepts, think of the most commonly used synonyms or closely related terms for each concept. These will be linked together with OR to create separate search statements for each of your concepts.

For example, if we take the concept illegal immigration from our search example, we might list the following additional related terms for that concept: illegal immigrants, illegal aliens or undocumented workers. For the concept, economy, we could also list economics. For the concept, U.S., United States and American should also be included.

Using a Search Worksheet

It is very useful to organize the various search terms for each concept in a research question by using a "Search Worksheet" as shown below.

SEARCH WORKSHEET

Research Question (or Topic):

What is the effect of illegal immigration on the U.S. economy?

In many databases, such as the Gale PowerSearch databases, an advanced search mode allows you to enter all of the search terms for all your concepts on a single search page. Separate entry boxes are provided for each concept with a choice of Boolean operators (e.g. AND or OR) available between each of the entry boxes.

This process is described in detail in the tutorial, Advanced Searching on Skyline College Library Periodical Databases.

Truncation and "Wildcards"

It is common to find that several search terms identified for a single concept may begin with the same root. For example, for the concept economy, you may also want to include economic or economics or economist. Instead of listing all of these terms separately, many databases allow a search procedure called truncation. The truncation feature lets you use a special symbol to search for any words beginning with a particular root. The most common truncation symbol used by many databases is the asterisk (*), but some databases use the question mark (?), or the exclamation point (!). In our search example, we could use truncation to search for "economy" or "economic" or "economics" or "economist", by simply entering "econom*" in the InfoTrac or Gale databases. It is important to be careful, however, when using truncation, because if you truncate after too short of a stem, you might retrieve words that you don't want. If you used eco* instead of econom*, for example, you would also retrieve records with the words ecology or ecosystem.

In addition to the use of truncation for words with same root but different endings, some databases allow the use of a special symbol, often called a wildcard, in the middle of a word to search for spelling variations such as adviser or advisor. The "wildcard" symbol would be used in place of the letter that may vary, e.g. advis?r would find either adviser or advisor.

11. REVISING YOUR SEARCH

If your search finds too few records:

• one of your concepts may be limiting your search too much and may have to be excluded

OR

• you might be missing important search terms for one or more concepts

If your search finds too many records:

• one or more of your search terms may be too broad

OR

• you may need to focus your search further by adding another search statement corresponding to an additional concept

Finally, if your search is retrieving too many false hits (irrelevant records), you should re-examine your concepts and search terms and make sure they accurately and completely cover the main ideas of your research question. False hits are a common problem when doing keyword searching, usually because your search terms are being used in an article in a context not relevant to your topic. For example, the term “dating” could pull up articles on radiocarbon dating as well as on relationships. The database does not know which you are interested in.

If you’re having a problem finding relevant records, you may want to contact the librarian who can review your search strategy and suggest other advanced search techniques – such as proximity operators or field searching -- that might be helpful.

12.  KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER

Vast amounts of information that search engines such as Google cannot find are available in the Deep Web.

Web databases are used to access information in the Deep Web.  Thousands of Web databases exist.

A periodical database is a type of Web database.  They provide articles published in selected magazines, journals, and/or newspapers during a specified time period. 

A periodical is a publication – such as a magazine, journal, or newspaper – that’s published at periodic intervals, i.e. daily, monthly, etc.  They’re very important sources of information for a variety of reasons and almost any research project should include them.

The four most common types of periodical articles are: news articles, editorials, research articles, and book reviews.

There are 5 types of periodicals:

        1) scholarly and research journals

        2) professional magazines and journals
        3) magazines and journals of commentary and opinion
        4) popular magazines and news magazines
        5) newspapers

A powerful method of searching periodical databases is keyword searching using Boolean logic.  This approach allows you to use logical operators (sometimes called Boolean operators) to combine keywords. The 2 most common logical operators are OR and AND.

You may have to revise your search if you find too many or too few records.  False hits are also sometimes a problem when searching using Boolean logic.

Go to  Tutorial: Advanced Searching on Skyline College Library Periodical Databases

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Last revised: 11-5-08 by Eric Brenner & Dennis Wolbers, Skyline College, San Bruno, CA
These materials may be used for educational purposes if you inform and credit the author and cite the source as: LSCI 100: Introduction to Information Online Research. All commercial rights are reserved. Send comments or suggestions to: Eric Brenner at: brenner@smccd.net.