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Research Study referenced in a Popular Journal

Sometimes you will read about a research study in a popular journal (Time, Newsweek) and you want to locate the scholarly article that describes the research. This tutorial will show you some techniques for locating the original research article.

1. Looking for Clues in the Article

Here is an example from an article published in Herizons, a popular magazine. The article reports on the results of a study on harassment. The author doesn't give us the complete citation to the article but she does leave us some important clues, in this case, the authors of the study and the journal where the study was published. We also know it was published sometime in 2010 or 2011 because the popular article was published in 2011.

Herhcovic's and Barling's findings in the Journal of Applied Psychology

Janusz, Barbara. "Is Your Boss a Bully?" Herizons 25.2 (Fall 2011): 34-36.

2. Locating the Article in an Online Journal

We now have enough clues to locate the article.

The article was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and I have the authors' names (Hershcovis and Barling).

To locate this article, I will search for the journal.

  1. Go to the Library home page (http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/)
  2. Click on Find It
  3. Click on E-journals

Now I can search to see if we have this journal in electronic format by typing the name of the journal into the Find eJounrnal by title text box.

3. Search for the Online Journal

We have access to the Journal of Applied Psychology via a database called PsycArticles. I can see we have it from 1917 to the present so I think I will be able to find the journal this way since it was published around 2010. Click on PsycArticles to access the online version of this journal.

4. Search within the Journal

Now I can search the Journal of Applied Psychology online. I can see that is is arranged by year and volume. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly when the article was published and there are a number of issues in 2010.

I can click on the 2010 volume and browse the table of contents for each issue or I can search within the journal for a word, such as the author's last name. 

Journal of Applied Psychology

In this example, I entered a search term (the author's name) in the search box on the left side.

Search within a journal

Locating the Article

I have searched all of the Journal of Applied  Psychology for the author's name (Hershcovics) and located a couple of articles. This looks like the one I want. It's about harrassment and it has the other author (Baring) listed.

Full text of journal article

Now I can click on the PDF of the article on the right and read the original research article.