Central Oregon
Community College
LIBRARY 127
PERIODICAL
ARTICLES
KINDS OF
PERIODICAL ARTICLES: So far, this course has covered regular books,
reference books, and how to find and use them. We're moving on now, to a discussion of
periodical (the library word for journals, newspapers and magazines) articles.
Think about this. When you look at a book, you are looking at 200 to 300 pages of text. If
it's an academic book, that text represents substantial research on the part of the
author. The book will probably have a bibliography and footnotes. Such a book covers a
topic with depth--it discusses the finer and more detailed aspects of the topic. This kind
of book also offers breadth--it covers the span of the topic, whether it be a certain time
period, event, or person. Reference books, on the other hand, offer brief contextual
overviews of a topic, as well as facts, statistics and definitions.
Periodical
articles--especially journal articles--offer short doses of information in great detail.
If reading a book is like scanning a horizon through a telescope, then reading a journal
article is like using a magnifying glass to investigate the tree trunk right next to you.
Journal articles offer shorter, detailed, more specific examinations of a topic.
Journal articles tend to be pretty scholarly.
It's important that you incorporate journal articles into your research after
you have already learned about your topic by perusing reference books and regular books.
The language used in journal articles can be highly specialized--another good reason for
looking at reference books first! Use journal articles once your topic is quite defined
and narrow.
We've been talking about journal articles but there are actually three kinds of periodical
articles. Here are characteristics of each:
Journal Articles:
Journal articles are scholarly and academic. Many are written by professional scholars in
a particular field. The content of journal articles is usually substantiated with
footnotes and a bibliography. Most journal articles list the author's name, and sometimes
their academic credentials and institutional background, as well. Journal articles are
what you use for college level research! Journals tend to be very text oriented, without a
lot of pictures or advertisements.
Magazine Articles:
Magazine articles tend to be more accessible, general, and appealing to the
public-at-large. Many magazine articles will not list authors. Most magazine articles will
not include bibliographies or footnotes. Magazines have pictures and advertisements, both
of which offer information to the investigative reader.
Generally, you do not want to use
magazine articles for college level research; however, in some cases, magazine articles
(or magazine pictures or advertisements) can be used as evidence to support the thesis of
your research project.
For example, if you are preparing to write a
paper on "the portrayal of men in womens' magazines" you might want to cite
specific articles (and advertisements or pictures) from womens' magazines to illustrate
your point. Using evidence in this way, by the way, is called "primary
research".
Newspaper Articles:
Newspaper articles cover news, politics, local, national and world events, and weather in
addition to providing the latest on sports, entertainment and political figures, and
popular culture values and phenomena.
Newspapers make a great primary source for college level research; use them as evidence to
support your thesis on matters of a political or cultural nature. Newspapers serve
wonderfully for retrospective research, as well. Locate your hometown's newspaper issues
published around the time of the Vietnam War (they might be on microfilm) for a local and
personalized perspective of that event.
Newspapers also provide evidence of geographical or political bias around historical or
cultural events. Did the San Francisco Chronicle cover the incarceration of U.S. citizens
of Japanese descent during World War II in a way that was different, say, than the
coverage in the New York Times?
Then too, newspapers tend to offer the general
public their first taste of a research project that has been floating around the academic
and professional journals for some time. Many newspaper articles, while not providing
footnotes, will at least cite the source of their information within the text of the
article.
EVALUATING PERIODICAL ARTICLES:
Evaluate periodical articles before you decide to use them in your research.
Check first for academic quality:
Does the article list an author?
Does the article have footnotes and/or a bibliography?
What are the author's qualifications?
Does the article offer appropriately current research?
Then, evaluate the article for its point-of-view, or bias.
Even academic articles will have a bias (perhaps particularly so) of one kind or
another!
Is the author or the article coming from point of view that is:
politically conservative?
politically liberal?
politically radical?
feminist?
misogynist?
racist?
mistrustful of foreigners or certain ethnic groups?
homophobic?
overly politically correct?
As you might have discovered by now, your reading of an article's bias may in turn be
influenced by your own points of views and values. You don't have to discard an article
because it shows evidence of a particular bias; you do have to take note of that bias as
you continue your research and as you write your paper.
Your instructor (and composer of these pages) believes that every piece of information
presents a bias--including the lessons for this course! Try this for a week: evaluate
everything you hear and read on the radio and TV, on billboards and advertisements and
commercials, and in your course work. How many points-of-view or bias do you encounter? Is
there any point-of-view that you have assumed the whole world shared?
LOCATING JOURNAL ARTICLES: You find
periodical articles by using periodical databases.
Periodical Indexes are also available (you may remember the
Readers' Guide from high school)
and are used mainly for topics not well represented by COCC Library databases,
to supplement database searches, or in rare power outages! You can locate
the periodical indexes adjacent to the video collection on the main floor of the
library.
Periodical indexes look like books and provide access to citation information (that is, the author,
article title, date, journal title, publication date, volume numbers and page numbers) for
journal and magazine articles. Articles can cover a wide range of topic, depending on the
subject of the index itself.
Periodical databases can be discipline specific (the Education Resource Information Center
(ERIC), for example) or general (Ebsco's Academic Search
Premier). Most databases cover a
range of years. Periodical databases provide citations and full-text for newspaper,
magazine and journal articles. COCC's Oregonian database, for example, gives the full-text
(every word of the actual article) for the Oregonian from 1986 to the present. The Nursing
(CINAHL) Database gives only citations for articles about nursing and allied health
sciences. If you are using a periodical index, or a citation only periodical database, you
will need to locate the journal articles within your library, or order them on
Inter-Library loan.
CITATIONS
When you perform a search in an online
periodical database, you will get a results list. The results list
provides a list of citations--information about articles responding to
your search. The information is very specific and includes the title of
the article, the author of the article, the title of the journal, the date, and
the volume, issue and page information.
A citation in
a a database results list will look something like this:
The Influence of Parent Education and Family Income on Child Achievement: The
Indirect Role of Parental Expectations and the Home Environment. By: Davis-Kean,
Pamela E.. Journal of Family Psychology, Jun2005, Vol. 19 Issue 2, p294,
11p-304; DOI: 10.1037/0893-3200.19.2.294; (AN 17533126)
Cited References (33)
Notes: This
title is not held locally
Request this item through interlibrary loan -- COCC students ONLY!
The first item:
The Influence of Parent Education and Family Income on Child Achievement: The
Indirect Role of Parental Expectations and the Home Environment
is the TITLE.
The AUTHOR is: Davis-Kean, Pamela
E. (last name is always given first).
The TITLE OF THE JOURNAL is: Journal of
Family Psychology/
The VOLUME NUMBER, ISSUE NUMBER and PAGE NUMBERS look
like this:
Vol. 19 Issue 2, p294, 11p-304
Go here to take a look at the databases available at COCC Library's
Databases page.