SOCW310 (Human Behavior and the Social Environment): Find Journal Articles

The following databases will provide you with journal articles, book reviews, and more in the areas of social work, education, and psychology.

The subject-specific databases listed in the Social Work Databases section are the best places to start searching for social work materials, but you will probably also benefit from searching in some of the multi-disciplinary databases. Here are a few that are recommended:

APU has close to 100 databases to assist you in your research. Most of these databases will help you find journal articles. However, there are many more types of content that you will discover in these databases, such as streaming music (Classical Music Library), electronic books (Ebrary), art images (ARTstor), just to name a few.

To access the databases...

• Go to the library website and click "All Databases."
• For databases relevant to social work, click on the drop-down list of databases by subject or major, and then click on "Social Work."

The search below is an example of finding research articles on a particular topic (in this case, on mentoring and grades). For your particular topic, put one to three search terms in the top search box, and then enter what you see in the second search box below into your second search box. This will retrieve research articles on your topic.

SEARCH TIPS:

• Keep your searches simple - the more search terms you enter, the more options you choose in drop-down menus, and the more limits you place on your search, the closer to zero results you will get.
  
  
• Many databases allow the use of an asterisk in order to retrieve all word forms. In the example above, the results will contain one or more words that start with 'mentor' (such as mentor, mentored, mentors, mentoring) and one or more words that start with 'grade' (such as grade, grades, graded). This is an efficient way of retrieving results with all the variations of a particular word.
  
  
• Before you enter search terms and perform a search, look for a limits section of some sort. While it's better to choose as few limits as you can get away with (the more you add, the fewer results you'll get), it's generally a good idea to limit your results to scholarly/peer-reviewed items each time you use a database. You might also consider language and publication date as limits.
  
  
• Do NOT select the 'Full Text' box that you will see in the limits sections of various databases. This narrows down the results to only those that have full-text articles. While this sounds like a good thing, you could actually be excluding the perfect article that might be available in full-text in a different database. See the 'Finding Full Text Articles Online' box below for more information.
  
  
• In general, you should be able to use many of the same terms from the 'Searches to Get You Started' section on the 'Find Books & Media' page in this guide.

In most databases, you can limit your search to scholarly articles at the beginning of your search, or when you already have a results list. 

Before you enter your search terms, look for a way to limit your search to only scholarly/peer-reviewed articles, as you see in the example below.

You might also be able to narrow your results list to only scholarly/peer-reviewed articles if you didn't do it at the beginning of your search (see example).

There are usually a couple of scenarios in which you find yourself needing to know if APU Libraries can provide you with a particular journal article: 1) you found a journal article listed in a bibliography, or a syllabus, or elsewhere, and you'd really like to get it, or 2) you're searching in one of the many journal article databases, and you find an article in the results list that you want, but you don't see a full-text link. In the first case, a tool called 'Article Finder' will be helpful, and in the second case, the 'Full Text Finder' links will assist you.

Have a Particular Article You Want to Find? Use Article Finder!

When you want to know if APU Libraries can provide you with a particular journal article you have citation information for, Article Finder is the tool for you. Follow these steps:

1. Go to the library website: http://www.apu.edu/library/
2. Click on the 'Articles and Databases' tab, and then on the 'Article Finder' link (see graphic below). 
   
   
   
3. Type in at least the journal title (or ISSN), volume, issue and the article title, and click 'Search' or 'Go.' More information is good, too. If you have a DOI, no other information is necessary.
4. If the article is available in full-text for you to read online, you will be taken to a page displaying linked options for full text availability for the article and you can follow the link(s) to your database of choice when any such options are displayed and then find the article. [Note: This functionality may change with our new library system in 2022.]
5. If there are no full text listings, this means that it isn't available in any of our databases nor in our print holdings. You will see a form with most of the citation filled out. Fill out any other citation information if necessary, and submit the form. You will receive the article in your email within 2-10 business days if it's available from our partner libraries. See the interlibrary loan services section of the library website. 
6. If you are having problems using Article Finder, or if you're interested in simply checking to see if APU has a particular journal title, use the search box on the 'Journal Titles' tab. As opposed to Article Finder which takes complete citation information, Periodical Finder only requires the journal title to be inputted to check holdings.  If we have that journal in our databases, you will see a "virtual shelf" listing of the volume numbers available and you can click on the volume link and then use "search within" to find the needed article. 

Found a Great Article in a Database but No Full Text? Use Full Text Finder!

Before following the instructions below, note that not all of our databases will have Full Text Finder links (but most will).

1. When you've performed a search in one of the journal article databases, and you have a list of results, you'll eventually start noticing that some results will have a full-text link (which means you can access the article online), and others have a Full Text Finder link (which means the database you're using does not provide access to the article online): 
2. Click on the Full Text Finder link. You will be taken to a page listing links to possible options for finding or requesting the full text of the article, including:  Full Text - APU Licensed Resources (when it's available in any other databases) and ILL/Interlibrary Loan for APU patrons that has a link to a form so that you can request it via our ILL team - fill out any additional information, submit the form, and you should receive the article by email within 2-10 business days.  Additional groups of Browse options by journal title, author or article can be found there as well that can be pursued to try to unearth full text, but the most useful are the above-mentioned APU Licensed Resources (which sometimes includes Open Access as well), ILL services or searching APU's catalog to determine if we have the journal (and the volume and issue needed) in our print collection and then go to the library and make a copy or scan of it.