Subject Guides: Faculty Research at Hostos
|
|
|
Compiled by:
Professor Angel Luis Falcón Oyola
This guide is intended to help our faculty quickly 1) target publications in their fields for development in teaching and research; and 2) navigate through the various research resources available to the CUNY faculty member
IDENTIFY JOURNALS FOR PUBLICATION
This walkthrough provides a step-by-step process of identifying an online journal, judging its quality, and using the materials.
The first thing a faculty member should do is to familiarize themselves with the various databases we have available in their respective subject area. They can do that by going to the Library's web page and clicking on "Research Databases". You will see that on the right hand side of the page is a series of links categorizing our electronic database collection. You should click on your respective Unit and then read through the provided database descriptions and try a couple of searches on each relevant database. Spending 20 minutes or so doing that will help you learn to navigate our databases.
Electronic resources for research are available to Hostos students and faculty through the Hostos Library Web site. The CUNY Library Services Licensed Resources page provides direct access to CUNY+ and a wide range of Web-based subscription databases. While CUNY+ can be accessed from anywhere, including home, the Web-based services are by subscription and are only accessible from a campus Internet workstation or from home through CUNY’s Remote Patron Authentication service. Select databases are available from off campus with a validated Hostos ID card. You must come to the library to make sure your library ID is activated in order to access these databases from home. After activating your account, access these services via the Distance Library Resources link from the Library’s home page. Each database presents a unique interface, search features and output options. Once connected to a database, read the screen, follow directions and look for the “Help” features as needed. All databases use Boolean search techniques for optimal search results (see our reference handout for more detailed help). Handouts and instructional guides on how to use the databases are available in the Teaching & Learning section.
To identify a few journals for both submission and research purposes in your respective fields you should search SerialsSolutions. This product allows browsing of electronic journals by subject area. It is where all of the full-text journals are collected. It should be noted that journal articles found digitally, generally, are merely exact copies of print journals. They are no different than their print counterparts. There seems to be a popular notion that e-journals/electronic resources are “internet” sources. This is not the case. Most libraries purchase only the online subscriptions to journals because they are generally a more cost-effective alternative. There are, however, some journals that are exclusively electronic (what are generally called e-journals), but their quality is not diminished in any way because of their method of distribution.
The SerialsSolutions interface is pictured below.
The first way to look through the CUNY electronic journal holdings is to search by title. There are various ways to search by title. If you have an exact title you can search with the “Title equals” function or the “Title contains all words” function. If you are not exactly sure of a journal title, but you know how the journal title starts the first option of “Title begins with” would be most helpful.
The second way to utilize SerialsSolutions is to "browse by subject".
You should first select a discipline that you wish to browse in, then click the search button to the right of the drop-down menu.
For this particular example I selected the “Gender and Ethnic Studies” subject category. When you click on browse a series of subject specific subdivisions will appear on the next screen. So, for this instance, in the field of Women’s Studies there are 52 e-journals/online subscriptions. Select from those subdivisions a topic of interest and browse from there. In this case I selected “African American Studies” to browse the 18 e-journal holdings we have there.
Circled is the African American review, and you will notice that we have electronic copies of this particular journal in several of our CUNY databases. The coverage is listed to the left of the hyperlinks that are on the right. Let us look at the holdings in Academic Search Premier as this particular database has a feature that is helpful to all types of user, but is of particular usefulness for faculty.
When you click on an Academic Search Premier holdings link, you see a description of the e-journal. What is of particular interest to faculty is highlighted in the above image. The first item of note is that Academic Search Premier offers a static link to the publisher’s website to give you a fuller description of the journal including submission guidelines. The second item of note is the “frequency/peer reviewed” information. That gives you an idea about the frequency of publication and the “peer reviewed” option states whether the journal is peer reviewed or not. This should prove helpful in searching for journals to track, target for publication or pull current scholarship for syllabi. You will also see that there is a description of the subject matter in the "subjects" field.
Clicking on the "Search Within This Publication" link circled above will take you to a search screen where you can search exclusively in the journal of choice.
Above you see that the search screen allows you a variety of search choices. When you click on the "Search Within This Publication" link, you get the above search screen. The first thing you should notice is that the selected journal is now in the Search bar. In this case you have "JN 'New England Journal of Medicine'" which is the code telling the database to search only the New England Journal of Medicine. Below that you will see a series of checkboxes that give you the option to either expand or limit your search. Be sure to read through each one.
A final issue of note is how to put together the search itself. You can see above that one of the limiting options allows you to type in the name of the journal that you want to search, but remember that the title of the journal is already in the search bar. What you want to do to narrow a search is to do a Boolean search in the search bar. So, for example, if one wanted to search for anxiety in the New England Journal of Medicine you would input the search with an AND search as shown:
You also do more complicated Boolean searches if needed. If you do not know how to create complicated searches, please contact one of the reference librarians at the reference desk at the library.
Many journals are available electronically, but in certain cases CUNY may or may not subscribe to these journals in electronic format. If you want to see is CUNY has a subscription go to CUNY + Journal Catalog.
The first thing to notice is to see exactly where in the CUNY + Catalog you are currently searching. The default CUNY + file at any CUNY school is the host library. So, in our case, Hostos Library is the home library as you see highlighted above in the upper lift hand corner. You can change that to searching all the CUNY libraries by the “Select all CUNY Libraries” link in the menu-bar just below it. You will notice that the Journal Title Search screen looks almost exactly the same as the initial Hostos Holdings screen.
The difference between the Journal Index and the Hostos Index is that the Journal Index covers all of the journals owned by CUNY including e-journals and print journals whereas the Hostos index is Hostos exclusive materials. This is important because being part of a major research institution like CUNY, you have access to all of their print journals.
The above is meant to illustrate a couple of ways to search not only this Index, but all of the CUNY + Indices. Notice that the term Search by Keyword is circled, this is to illustrate one of the two ways that people usually search any online database. When you do a keyword search the database searches for the terms throughout the database records. The bibliographic records, or the computer version of the index cards from the old style card catalogs, have dozens of places where text is searched and, at times, keyword searching can be very imprecise. An example would be searching for a French literature journal by merely typing “France” or “French”; this could result in lists of records which were printed in France, concern French American issues, translated to or from French, or have alternate titles in French such as most United Nations serials. Therefore, it is helpful to use a keyword search if you have a clear idea of the title or author but not the exact information. A better default search is to Browse the Fields of the Index. A Browse is much more suited to finding Journals because you can browse subject headings and title lists. Below you will see the Browse drop down menu options:
If you select a specific field to search in the circled drop down menu such as the subject field or the title field, then you can add more accuracy to your search. And it will, again, return a full list of results that looks like this:
This is the results list that a person sees after they done a keyword search by subject for “dental hygiene” as an example. The circled journal title above is an indication of what can be a problem associated with keyword searching versus a subject specific search or a subject browse. You will, at times, receive results that are not relevant to your search. All you have to do is click on the holdings link and see what coverage we have in the CUNY system.
Professors are committed not only to original research in their field, but are uniquely positioned to contribute to the research of pedagogy. Below you will find some journals that specifically target teaching scholarship.
Educational technology research and
development
This is a quarterly,
peer-reviewed journal on
research in educational
technology and education communications. This journal publishes articles on
uses of technological in all types of educational settings.
Journal of curriculum studies
This is a bi-monthly, peer
reviewed journal that touches upon all aspects of curriculum development,
pedagogy and higher education issues. It is published bi-monthly.
Language teaching research : LTR
A journal published three
times a year that should be of unique interest to the Hostos faculty is LTR that
focuses on second and foreign language teaching. The journal is peer reviewed
takes submissions of both a qualitative and quantitative nature.
Multicultural perspectives
This quarterly peer
reviewed journal is an inter-disciplinary text that promotes social justice. It
also celebrates diversity as a strength of American educational culture.
Radical teacher
Published
three times a year, this peer reviewed journal operating out of Cambridge, MA is
dedicated
to the theory & practice of teaching. Serves educators who are working for
democratic process, peace, & justice. Examines the root causes of inequality &
promotes progressive social change.
Community college journal of research and
practice
The is a peer reviewed journal
published ten times a year. It publishes original research papers in the fields
of community and junior college education and the social and behavioral
sciences. This is an excellent journal for both professional research and
submission.
Community college review
This is a refereed, peer
reviewed, quarterly journal of original articles on both the theoretical and
practical aspects of community college education in the areas of administration
and management, changing technology, instruction, programming and curriculum and
student needs.
College student journal
CSJ is a unique
publication that deals, primarily, with
original investigations and
theoretical papers dealing with college student values, attitudes, opinions and
learning. Includes coverage of graduate and professional schools.
College teaching
This quarterly, peer
reviewed, journal features
interdisciplinary articles on issues related to teaching at the undergraduate
and graduate levels; teaching philosophy and practices, teachers' roles,
professional development and evaluation, incentives and commentary on articles
in the journal.
New directions for community colleges
New Directions for
Community Colleges is a quarterly, peer reviewed publication that covers
the guidance
needed in meeting the challenges of administrators distinctive and expanding
educational mission.
New directions for teaching and learning
This quarterly
peer reviewed journal features
a series of
thematic journals presenting ideas and techniques for improving college
teaching, based both on the practical expertise of seasoned instructors and on
the latest research findings of educational and psychological researchers.
Peer review : emerging trends and key debates in undergraduate education
This quarterly peer
reviewed journal
provides a
briefing on emerging trends & key debates in undergraduate education. Each issue
is focused on a specific topic, provides analysis & features campus
perspectives.
Teaching in higher education
A peer
reviewed quarterly devoted to issues in higher education, assess the roles of
teaching, learning and the curriculum in higher education in order to explore
and clarify the intellectual challenges which they present.
RefWorks is a bibliographic utility that allows a person to save citations from various different databases and then manipulate them to create works cited lists, bibliographies, and even has an program that allows to transfer saved citations as footnotes and endnotes. This database requires that you create a unique user login and password before you start to use it. This allows you to access the software anywhere since it is a web-based tool. This is a link to their web guide which should download and print for future reference to guide you through the process of using this wonderful software. In order to download the guide you are going to need Adobe Reader installed on your computer. Click here to download a free version of Adobe Reader if you already do not have a copy. In the upper left hand corner of the beginning RefWorks screen are 2 links to their tutorial and online help. The online tutorial is broken into sections but if you want the entire tour set aside 45 minutes. This time is WELL WORTH IT. The help links are also excellent. Refworks can be found on the Library's homepage by clicking on the drop-down menu and selecting "RefWorks". The screen shot below will illustrate this:
BOOKS AT HOSTOS, CUNY & INTERNATIONALLY
This guide will not delve into the functions of the CUNY book catalog known as CUNY + since as scholars you are all aware of how book catalogs are used to organize collections. What I do want to mention are some facts that may have escaped your notice. The first being that Hostos is a part of CUNY. Obviously, you know that, but what is important to know is that you have borrowing privileges at all the CUNY libraries so when you search CUNY + doing a "Select All CUNY Libraries" search, you can go to any CUNY library and take out those books, photocopy from their print journal collections, or utilize their private databases that are not CUNY-wide purchases (i.e.--Hostos has some Spanish Language Electronic Databases that other CUNY's do not purchase). You also have a right to ordering materials via Inter-Library Loan. This is a service where if you have a citation the library will attempt to acquire that material from another library. A great place to search for citations is in the international library holdings database known as WorldCat which is found in the middle of the Research Databases page as a link. WorldCat has holdings from most of the major libraries in the world. A citation from there can be directed to the Circulation Desk of the Library where Inter-Library Loan requests are handled. A final fact of note is that you, as a faculty member in New York City, have free access to one of the most impressive public library collections in the world, actually THE preeminent lending and research public library in the entire world. The New York Public Library has a vast array of print and electronic; popular, professional and academic literature that is essentially unparalleled for public use. You should definitely never ignore its resources when you are trying to fill an information need.
When you are attempting to fill an information need as a faculty member, it is important to keep certain things in mind since your information needs are usually much more complex than that of the average library patron in any setting.
1) Did you consult your professional literature? Did you search any and all newsletters, publications, published conference proceedings from the definitive professional organization in your field?
2) Did you consult the scholarly literature in your field? In both electronic and print formats? At Hostos, CUNY, and Internationally? New York Public Library?
3) Did you search the popular literature for materials relating to your information needs such as newspapers, weeklies and monthlies?
These three simple items to check off will usually insure that you have done a thorough search for materials in your field, whether for your professional development, keeping up with the field, or attempting to pinpoint a place for publication.
THE INTERNET...SOMETHING TO CONSIDER
Many in the professoriate shirk from searching the internet for academic or professional material. While it is true that the internet, for the most, is a plethora of opinions and not researched academic materials, it still provides a wealth of information for the sophisticated researcher. While by now you are all familiar with the internet, there is one function that most internet search engines has that is rather advantageous for the academic attempting to mine the internet for materials.
The feature that I speak of is performing a search using a domain limiter. There are other terms such as "domain restrict", but they mean the same thing; you can search the internet retrieving ONLY links from CERTAIN domains such as from ".edu" websites. This is important because you can now filter out the ".com" and ".org" websites that are usually biased or based on profits.
I will use Google for the same screens since Google is the search engine of choice at this point.
First, you will see below that the Google home page is rather simple. Notice the "advanced search" link to the right of the Search Bar.
When you click on that "Advanced Search" link, you are taken to the page below. Notice that there is a search already inputted in the first search box on "bilingual education". There are now many more options for the typical search versus the single search bar, keyword search that is found on the Google home page. This is one of the better reasons to use the advanced search and not the home page search. The second aspect of the screen shot below that is relevant is the "domain" search that I mentioned earlier. I typed in ".edu" so that my search on bilingual education only yields results from website affiliated with educational institutions which, for the most part, are going to be college and university websites. This little feature found in nearly all search engines cuts a good portion of the "quality control" problems that one finds when looking for scholarly, authoritative information on the internet.
