Global Go To Think Tanks contains hundreds of these institutions broken down by various categories: top in the world, top regional think tanks, think tanks arranged by research area, and think tanks recognized for special achievement. When doing research on policy questions, this compendium would provide a great starting place to identify major players in your field of endeavor be it security, or health policy, or international economics.
Archive for Research Tips
Open Access to Royal Society Publications
The Royal Society has announced that it has made its entire article archives open to the public. This allows researchers to review the Philosophical Transactions, the world’s first peer-reviewed journal, back to 1665. In addition, the Society’s Proceedings, as well as its other titles, are now freely available. You can read articles by Fred Hoyle, Joseph Banks, Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Paul Dirac, Crick and Watson to name a few. Over 60,000 articles are available providing an historical glimpse into the development of science in the Western world. The search screen is found here. Enjoy!
JSTOR Gives Free Access to Out-of-Copyright Articles
JSTOR has released 500,000 articles that have passed out from under copyright restrictions (in the United States, that means pre-1923, and for other parts of the world, it is pre-1870). What this means, especially for those in the humanities, is that you have access to both primary and secondary sources. For example, you can read Benjamin Franklin’s article on an “electrical kite” or “Of the Tides in the South Seas” by Captain James Cook or one of the first mentions of climate change in “An Attempt to Account for the Change of Climate, Which Has Been Observed in the Middle Colonies in North-America” from 1770. This “Early Journal Content” is accessible from here. Also included in this section are selected recent articles residing on external sites.
SAGE Publishers Makes Freely Available Top Downloaded Articles
SAGE, in a press release, has announced that it is allowing free access to the top three most downloaded articles from 39 separate disciplines for the years 2009-2010. In addition, it is offering free access to the top downloaded articles from its backfiles in these disciplines. So researchers will have access to the most recent top research as well as to those articles that have stood the test of time. For example, from the 2009-2010 batch, one may read: Islam, Women and Violence from Feminist Theology, Defining Dyslexia from The Journal of Learning Disabilities, or Geographies of brands and branding from Progress in Human Geography while the backfile contains such works as Symbolic Power from the Critique of Anthropology, Leininger’s Theory of Nursing from Nursing Science Quarterly, or Doing Gender from Gender & Society. In total, more than 200 heavily downloaded articles are available; the 2009-2010 batch is here, and the backfiles are here.
Need to Find a Research Topic?
Besides asking your librarians who are veritable repositories of knowledge from the mundane to the esoteric, we suggest you try Times Topics from The New York Times. Arranged alphabetically are literally thousands of research topics ranging from “Abdullah, King of Saudi Arabia” to “Zoloft (Drug).” Each entry allows you access for free to articles published in paper from 1981 to the present. And many entries provide you with so much more. For example, the entry on Libya gives you not only hundreds of newspaper articles, but it also contains an essay replete with links, slideshows, timelines, a blog on Libya, articles from newspapers from around the world, and links to outside authoritative sources such as the CIA and the BBC. The same is true with the biographical entries; the one on Mubarak, Hosni has extensive features including a lengthy, updated profile, timeline, transcript of speeches, videos, and external links to additional information. If you need something on capital punishment or same sex marriage or global warming or terrorism or offshore drilling or thousands of other subjects, Times Topics is a good place to start. A subset of this is called Science Topics where the focus is strictly on scientific features such as air pollution or genetic engineering. And for medical news, please go to the Times Health Guides where you can find 3000+ topics ranging from autism to zinc in diet; all the topics are reviewed by medical specialists. Other places to consult, while not as extensive, include: BBC-Special Reports, CNN: Special Coverage and Hot Topics, Washington Post: Special Reports, and The Economist: Special Reports. For a more local flavor, try The Star-Ledger: Special Projects and Asbury Park Press: Investigative Special Reports
Free Access to Cambridge University Press Journals
Almost 300 scholarly titles from Cambridge University Press can be freely accessed until August 30, 2011; all the issues from 2009 and 2010 are available for perusal. All you have to do is register for free. We are positively salivating at the thought of unlimited access to the history journals this press publishes!
Free Online Dissertations/Theses
PQDT is a free service provided by ProQuest, the aggregator of the fee-based ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. Open access (definition here) dissertations and theses, the vast majority dating from 2007 forward, can be freely read online from hundreds of institutions; New York University has over 500 dissertations/theses available alone. You can search by keyword, title, year, adviser, institution; the results can be sorted by relevancy or date. If only an abstract is present, clicking on the work’s title will tell you when it will become available online. Looking up one of our ancestry groups revealed 49 titles using the term “Iroquois.” The default relevancy ranking gave us dissertations from UC Davis, and SUNY Albany, Buffalo, and Stony Brook. While nowhere as extensive as the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database, this new accessible repository is worth a look.
Google Now Has Full Text Magazine Articles
Having undertaken the digitization of books, Google has now turned its attention to magazines. At the moment, full text archives, mostly ending in the late 1990s, can be accessed for New York Magazine, Popular Science, Jet, Ebony, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Google promises hundreds more titles in the near future. To search just for magazine articles, go the advanced book search screen and check off the “magazines” button. Update as of 12/12: Here is a list of more magazines scanned and indexed.
QandA NJ Demos
Need research help at midnight and don’t know where to turn? QandA NJ is the place for you! Available 24/7 New Jersey’s online chat reference service can help you find what you’re looking for. To learn how to use the service, attend a demo next week.
A student demo will be held on Thursday, November 6 from 4-4:30.
A faculty demo will be held on Thursday, November 6 from 12-12:30.
If you can’t make these times but would like to learn about it, just email me at lkortz@njcu.edu and I’ll be happy to set up an online demo for you!
United States Government Organization Manual
With elections and bailouts taking up so much news time, you frequently come across such mysterious entities as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or the Federal Election Commission. What are these organizations and where can you find reliable information on them? What the heck is the Presidio Trust? Look no further than the United States Government Organization Manual, the authoritative handbook of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government. Names of officials, tables of organization, phone numbers, addresses, web sites, enabling legislation, and activities are all enumerated in this tome. Also included are quasi-official agencies such as the Smithsonian Institution; selected multilateral and bilateral organizations to which the United States belongs; independent establishments; and government corporations. Previous editions can also be accessed here. This important resource and others will be found on the Library’s homepage in the “Government and Politics” category of the “Web Sites by Subject” section.
EZ Search
Did you ever wish you didn’t have to go to so many databases to find the articles you need? Your wish has come true!
With EZ search you can now search up to 50 databases in one search. How can you do this, you ask?
From this page enter your search terms and select databases which seem appropriate to your topic. Don’t select too many or your search will be overwhelming. The default search will look for your keywords in the title. If you need to expand your search change it to keyword using the pull down menu.
Why is this useful?
EZ SEARCH is particularly useful for searches that cross disciplinary boundaries. For instance, if you’re searching for articles about school bullying, you would want to search in the Education databases (Academic Search Premier, Education Full Text, ProQuest Education Journals) but you might also want to add some Psychology journals to your search (PsycArticles, PsycINFO, ProQuest Psychology Journals). And then you might also want to add a couple of Social Science databases (ProQuest Social Science and Wilson Omni-File).
EZ Search allows to search in databases that cover several different fields, which makes it a very powerful search option. Try and let us know if you have questions.
Peer Reviewed Journals
Every day students come to the library looking for peer-reviewed articles. Sometimes they say the articles have to be refereed or juried, other times they say it has to be scholarly or professional. Whatever the term, we understand what they’re looking for, but I often wish students had a better grasp of what peer review is and why it’s important, even as this hallmark of scholarly communication comes increasingly into question.
Wikipedia, often at the center of controversy in questions of authority, actually has a pretty good entry on peer review. Pay close attention to the section on the weaknesses and failures of peer review. For more authoritative coverage of the topic, see Nature’s Peer Review Debate.
If you’re reading this because you just want to know how to find peer reviewed sources in the library databases, stop by the reference desk at any time the library is open and we’ll show you how. (You can also call us at 201-200-3033.)
New Databases
Over the summer, the library subscribed to a large number of new databases in many subject areas. For the next few weeks I will be highlighting some of these and offering tips on how to use them to help you with your assignments and research.
Some of you may be wondering why you would need or want a database. Databases contain articles from many types of publications: scholarly journals, trade magazines, newsletters, and newspapers. As well, some databases contain material from reference books, dictionaries and encyclopedias. Every database has something good to offer, but it can be difficult to plow your way through all of them. I will try to make this a bit easier for you by highlighting a different one each week. I will start with the new ones first.
Research Tips
As the second summer semester comes to an end and your assignments are coming due, keep in mind the following library resources:
1. If you need books, use OSCAR, the library’s catalog. Search by keyword to get a list of all the books we have on the topic you need.
2. To find online books, go to NetLibrary on the Databases by Title list.
3. To find articles in scholarly journals or magazines, try Academic Search Premier or Wilson OmniFile. Both of them are available from the Databases by Title list.
4. To find articles for specific classes (Business, Nursing, Psychology, Sociology, etc.) search the Databases by Subject.
5. For help citing sources for a paper, see the citation guides. You can also try this site, which will format your citation for you.
The library will be open on Sunday, August 5 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Stop by if you need help or call us at 201-200-3033, email us at libraryref@njcu.edu. Or, when we’re not available, QandA NJ librarian are: 24/7. Visit them by clicking on the QandA NJ logo at the bottom of the library’s homepage.
Spotlight on: Your Journals@OVID
Your Journals@OVID
You may not have noticed this database because it’s all the way at the bottom of the Databases by Title list but if you’re writing papers or doing research in medicine, nursing or the allied health fields, definitely check it out. It includes full-text articles from about 60 journals, inlcuding the ones below:
- Epidemiology
- JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes
- Journal of Hypertension
- Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease
- Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
- Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
- Obstetrics & Gynecology
- Spine
- Stroke
- Transplantation
To see individual journal issues, click on Browse Journals from the first page. You can also search by keyword. If you need assistance using this database or any of our other databases, please give us a call at 201-200-3033 during all the hours the library is open.
Free from the NYT: TimesSelect
Enjoy New York Times editorials? Sad because you can’t get access to back issues without paying for them?
Be sad no more, there are now two ways to access back issues of the New York Times for free. At the library, the NYT is available through Lexis Nexis, on the Databases by Title list. If you don’t want to go through the steps required to search it, you may prefer to subscribe to TimesSelect, which is now free to users with a university email address.
According the NYT Web site, a university subscription entitles you to Op-Ed columns, news columns from Business, NewYork/Region, Sports and the International Herald Tribue and access to the Times Archive including 100 free articles per month.
It sounds like a great deal. I’m going to register now.
Need to Find Journal Articles?
If you need to find full-text journal articles about a specific topic, go to the library’s homepage and click on Databases by Title. This page shows you an A to Z list of all the databases to which the library subscribes. The journal articles are IN the databases.
If you are searching for articles in Education, Nursing or Business, or another field, try Databases by Subject, which will help you narrow your search. Select your subject area to see a list of databases that cover it.
If you have a citation and need to find a specific article that your professor has assigned, go to the Periodicals A to Z list and type in the journal title. If the journal is available in one of our databases, or on the second floor in print or microform, you will see links to it on that page.
For example, if you were looking for the following article:
Scott, T. J. & O’Sullivan, M. K. (2005). Analyzing student search strategies: Making a case for integrating information literacy skills into the curriculum. Teacher Librarian, vol. 33, no. 1, 21-5.
You would go into Periodicals list A to Z and type Teacher Librarian into the search box. The results page would tell you that this article is available in the following databases: ProQuest Education, Academic Search Premier, MasterFILE Premier and Wilson OmniFile. To get the article you would click on one of the links to that database. Then you would see a list of years, select your year (2005), then select the specific issue (1). It sounds kind of complicated, but once you get used to doing it, it’s a breeze.
Give it a try using the example above and and if you’re confused contact one of the librarians for assistance.
NJCU Graduation Photos
Our own Lou Tiscornia has taken some wonderful graduation photos. See them here. Thanks, Lou! The Jersey Journal also covered the NJCU graduation and you can see their photos here.
Those of you who have not graduated yet might want to take a look at some of the library’s instructional resources. Pay special attention to how to access the databases from home and tips for searching Academic Search Premier. Also see these EBSCO videos on basic and advanced searching using their databases. Knowing how to use the library will help you get better grades, and we all know that’s what really matters, right? ;=)
On trial: ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
The trial’s almost up, but you still have 18 days to take a look at, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (PQDT), available on our Web site until May 15, 2007. The premiere database for graduate research offers access to 2.3 million master’s theses and doctoral dissertations from around the world. Dissertations written since 1980 include a 350 word abstract. Theses written since 1988 include a 150 word abstract. Many dissertations since 1993 include a 24 page preview and more than 750,000 dissertations are available in full-text PDF format. Search by author, title, advisor, institution or keyword. Curious about what your professors and/or colleagues did their dissertation on? Look them up today!
After the trial ends, you still have access to Dissertation Abstracts through FirstSearch. (Just click on Dissertation Abstracts on the Databases by Title list) but you won’t have access to the full-text versions. To order dissertations, request them through Interlibrary Loan, or if you would like to purchase them, go through ProQuest’s Dissertation Express.
Some universities are providing online access to their master’s theses and doctoral dissertations. To see a sampling of these, browse the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations and/or Dissertation.com.
As always, we’re curious to hear your thoughts.
