Academic Journal Articles - NSP3885 - Fundamentals of Quality Management

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What Is an Academic Journal Article?

Academic journal articles are written by experts in a field, and usually report on the results of a study/experiment or summarize the current research in a field. These journal articles are usually longer, follow a set format, and build upon existing research.

Peer-reviewed journals are a subset of academic journals where there is a review process in place prior to publication of an article. Other experts (the "peers') review the submitted articles, provide feedback, and give the go-ahead for an article to be published. Peer-reviewed articles are the most trustworthy articles, since they have that review process.

Business Databases

To find relevant databases, change the drop-down box from All subjects to Business or Health & Medicine. This will show databases in those areas, both of which are useful for your assignment.

The two best databases suggested for this assignment are Business Source Complete and Healthcare Administration Database.

Business Source Complete excels in supporting research in the business side of healthcare, with full-text articles from more than 1,500 business publications and a massive collection of company reports and industry analyses. Scroll to the B section in the A-Z Databases list to find this database.

Direct link to Business Source Complete

On the search screen, you will need to limit to Peer Reviewed articles and limit your search to articles with a Publication Date after your date limit.

Business Source Complete from Lawrence W. Tyree Library on Vimeo.

This video tutorial will demonstrate how to find and access business-specific articles through the library database Business Source Complete.

To access library databases, click the gray Databases button on the library website.

Business Source Complete is listed alphabetically on the A-Z Databases page, or under the Business subject category in Best Bets. This database contains more than a thousand business and financial journals, case studies, company profiles, market reports, SWOT analyses, and more. To access this database, click its title.

To log in, your username is your SF ID number @sfcollege.edu. On the next screen, enter your college password.

The default search screen allows you to search for articles about business-related topics. When searching in the databases, use as few words as possible, and put different concepts in different boxes. In this example, the phrase minimum wage is in the first search box and small business is in the second search box.

The default setting limits your search to full text only. This means only articles that can be read in their entirety. The Full Text box should already be checked. To limit your search to scholarly articles, check the box next to Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals.

To read any of the articles in your search results, click the Full Text links located under the description of the article. You may also click the article title to learn more about it.

To the right of the detailed record or the full text of an article is a Tools bar. You can print, e-mail, save, or cite this article using these icons. You may also look at the article’s subject terms to discover more ways to search for your topic.

To see which terms are the official terms in this database, click the Thesaurus link in the top blue bar.

Enter your search terms in the browse area. When you type in a topic, the thesaurus will tell you the official term used in this database. For example, if you are searching for articles on flat tax, you should use the term flat-rate income tax in this database to retrieve the best and most relevant articles.

Often, it is advantageous to study an entire industry. The industry profile option contains reports that discuss and analyze the big picture of industry performance. Type the name of the industry in the search boxes, and select Industry Profile in the Publication Type limiter section.

Select the most relevant business sector report. The reports can be lengthy but are especially useful in comparing a single company to the industry whole, or to determine if the industry is growing or contracting.

Another tool of interest is case studies. A case study brings to life a hypothetical problem and solution in an actual business. To find case studies, type your area of interest in the search boxes. Then click Case Study under Publication Type.

One of the special features of Business Source Complete is the ability to find current and complete information on important companies. Most profiles are created by independent evaluators. To access the Company Profiles search, click the More link in the top blue bar and choose Company Profiles.

This example shows a MarketLine report on Walmart. MarketLine is a premier source for market research information..

For a more in-depth look at a company, click the Company Information link in the top blue bar. This allows you to search for a company by its name, ticker symbol, parent company, or a regular keyword search.

Company Profiles include basic information, financials, academic journals, newspapers, SWOT analyses, and more.

This concludes the video tutorial on using Business Source Complete. If you still have questions, please contact a librarian:

352-395-5409
reference@sfcollege.edu
Building Y, NW Campus
sfcollege.edu/library

Healthcare Administration Database

Search Tips
Video Tutorial

Healthcare Administration Database offers access to the full-text contents of over 1,000 health management journals and magazines. Scroll to the H section in the A-Z Databases list to find this database.

Direct link to Healthcare Administration Database

On the search screen, you will need to limit to Peer reviewed articles and limit your search to articles with a Publication date after your date limit.

Healthcare Administration Database from Lawrence W. Tyree Library on Vimeo.

Hello! This video tutorial will demonstrate how to find and read articles through the library database Healthcare Administration Database.

To access library databases, click the gray Databases button on the library website.

The A-Z Databases page lists all subscribed databases alphabetically. Scroll to the H section to find Healthcare Administration Database. This database contains full-text articles to support research in the business side of healthcare. To access this database, click its title.

To log in, your username is your SF ID number @sfcollege.edu. On the next screen, enter your college password. You may not see this screen if you are already logged in to Office 365 elsewhere.

This is the main search screen for Healthcare Administration Database. Use the search boxes at the top of the screen to look for articles about your topic. When searching in a database, use as few words as possible, and put different concepts in different boxes. For example, if you were researching cybersecurity concerns in electronic health records, you would put cybersecurity in the first search box and electronic health records in the second search box.

The main search screen also provides a few ways to limit your search. The default is to limit your search to only full text. This means limiting only to articles that can be read immediately. The Full text box should already be checked and should stay checked for most searches. To limit your search to peer-reviewed articles, check the Peer reviewed box.

If you need to limit your results to more recent articles, you can use the Publication date limit on the search page. For instance, you may need to limit to articles that were published within the last five years. Once you have set up your search, click the Search button.

The number of search results is listed below the search box. The results list contains basic information about each article. The title of the article is in blue.

Icons next to each result indicate the type of source it is from. Scholarly Journal, Trade Journal, and Magazine are usually the most common source types. Scholarly journal means that the article is from a scholarly journal. Magazine indicates that the article is from a more popular publication. A trade journal is a publication intended for those working in a field or industry.

To quickly see a summary of the article, click the Show Abstract link.

An abstract can help you determine if the article is relevant to your research before viewing the full text. You may also wish to review the listed Subjects, which can provide a more targeted way to search for your topic.

Click the title to see the full text of the article. This may be an embedded PDF or a typed-out version.

Above the article are a variety of icons. You can print, email, cite, or download the article using these icons.

For help citing the article, click the Cite icon. This provides generated citations in APA, MLA, Chicago, and other citation styles. You will need to double-check all citations, as there are frequently errors with capitalization and punctuation.

You will usually find better search results by using the subjects you find in the database. If you need help finding subjects, click the Look up Subject headings (all) link on the main search screen.

Enter a search term and click Find.

Find the best match and check the box. You can directly add this term to your search with the Add to search box.

The database will automatically populate the Subject heading (all) field with the subject heading or headings that you chose.

Subject heading searches are more precise, as they limit results to articles that specifically focus on those concepts. You will typically find more relevant results when you use subject headings.

This concludes the video tutorial on using Healthcare Administration Database. If you have any questions, please contact a librarian:

352-395-5409
reference@sfcollege.edu
Building Y, NW Campus
sfcollege.edu/library

How to Read a Journal Article

Reading and understanding an academic journal article can be daunting and is often more difficult than reading other types of information. Fortunately, most scientific journal articles have the same sections, and you can look at certain sections to pick out the main ideas and key findings.

This process guides you through a quick method to understand the key points of a journal article. Click through the tabs to see each step.

Please keep in mind that the sections mentioned correspond to scientific journal articles, which present original research. Some articles, especially those written in other fields (like the humanities or law), may not use these specific section headings.

View the full article from the examples

First, look at the title of the article to start to determine what the article will be about.

Now, read the abstract and see if you can identify the following:

The main problem or question the article addresses
The author’s approach (how they did the work to enable them to write the article)
The author’s conclusions
Why people should care about the work

At this point, you may decide that an article is not relevant to your research, and that's okay! It's important to get a feel for what an article is investigating and how it can be relevant to your own research.

Now, read the introduction. The introduction serves the same function as the abstract but with more details. Don’t breeze through the introduction in order to get to the "meat" of the text. In fact, do the opposite! Take time to understand the introduction because it could summarize the whole piece, present the main idea, tell us why we should care, and may even offer a road map for the rest of the article. Sometimes the introduction is obviously labeled "Introduction," but sometimes it's not. See if you can find it!

This might seem counter-intuitive, but now you can skip toward the end of the paper and look at the discussion section and the conclusion. The discussion section will usually put the results in context—what does it mean? What can we start to determine? What patterns are there? The final conclusion, then, is the final summary of what was learned from the study. Even though that information was included in the abstract, even a slight re-phrasing can help you understand the author’s arguments in an important, new way. Note: some articles may not have a separate conclusion section.

Now, you may choose to review other sections of the article to fill in your understanding. Other sections of a journal article that you can go back to are the literature review, which is a summary of the research that has already been done (and is sometimes included within the introduction), and the methods section, which lays out the exact experiment or model used. Many times, the results section may be raw data, so this may or may not be useful.

If there are any limitations or further study sections, you should examine them carefully. Limitations will note if there were any issues that may mean the current study cannot be broadly applied. For instance, maybe the people who were included in the study were mostly men, so it's hard to determine if the conclusions are equally as applicable to women. The Further Study section will discuss areas for further research, or questions that arose that may need to be investigated.

Now that you have a general understanding of the text’s different parts and of the main argument, think about what relevance the article has to your own purpose. How might you use ideas from the text to "enter the conversation" about the topic or questions at hand? How does this article help support or advance your argument? You may also choose to look through the article's references to find more research on the same topic.