On Sun, 15 May 2011 14:08:57 -0700, Rick Froman wrote: >RF: If the students have access to PsycINFO online (which they likely >will in order to write the Introduction or Literature Review section of their >paper) they will have access to the PsycINFO thesaurus of Psychological >Terms. I tell my students that the keywords at the end of the abstract are >designed to be used to index their research so other researchers will be >more likely to find it. In addition to the thesaurus, they will also find >keywords and subject terms at the end of the abstracts they discover in >their own search of the literature.
A couple of points on the above: (1) It is somewhat unclear to me what Rick is referring to when he says that students will have access to the thesaurus of psychological terms. Perhaps he can be a little more specific on how this is done. (2) It may come as something as a surprise to some people that PsycInfo can be accessed with different interfaces/vendors and what is presented after a search or accessing a record can differ across interfaces. I presently have access to the CSA Illumina version of PsycInfo and the EbscoHost version. When I did a search for the term "lexical decision task" the two versions differed in the articles that were hits. CSA had more recent articles (published in April 2011) while EbscoHost did not. I searched for the classic Meyer & Schvaneveldt article that first presented the word relatedness effects on the lexical decision task. Here is the record returned by the CSA version: Database PsycINFO Title Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: Evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations. Author Meyer, David E.1; Schvaneveldt, Roger W. Affiliation (1)Bell Telephone Lab., Murray Hill, N.j Source Journal of Experimental Psychology. Vol 90(2), Oct 1971, pp. 227-234 ISSN 0022-1015 Descriptors Meaning* Recognition (Learning)* Thinking* Words (Phonetic Units)* Abstract [Snipped to save space] Accession Number 1972-04123-001 DOI 10.1037/h0031564 Publisher US: American Psychological Association Other Publishers US: Psychological Review Company Journal Volume 90 Publication Type Journal; Peer Reviewed Journal; Journal Article Journal Pages 227-234 Journal Name Journal of Experimental Psychology Other Journal Names Journal of Experimental Psychology: General Language English Publication Year 1971 Format Availability Electronic; Print Format Covered Print Population Human Identifiers word pair recognition facilitation, dependence between retrieval operations Classification 2300 Human Experimental Psychology As hard as I try I cannot find a "Keywords" entry. Would someone try guessing what might be the "keywords"? Below is the equivalent record from the Ebscohost version: Authors: Meyer, David E., Bell Telephone Lab., Murray Hill, N.j Schvaneveldt, Roger W. Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol 90(2), Oct, 1971. pp. 227-234. Page Count: 8 Publisher: US: American Psychological Association. Other Journal Titles: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General Other Publishers: US: Psychological Review Company ISSN: 0022-1015 (Print) Language: English Keywords: word pair recognition facilitation, dependence between retrieval operations Abstract: [Snipped to save space] Subjects: *Meaning; *Recognition (Learning); *Thinking; *Words (Phonetic Units) Classification: Human Experimental Psychology (2300) Population: Human (10) Format Availability: Electronic; Print Format Covered: Print Publication Type: Journal; Peer Reviewed Journal Document Type: Journal Article Release Date: 19720101 Copyright: American Psychological Association. 1971. Digital Object Identifier: 10.1037/h0031564 Accession Number: 1972-04123-001 Number of Citations in Source: 18 Database: PsycINFO Full Text Database: PsycARTICLES In the Ebscohost version there is a field for "Keywords" but it contains the same information that CSA provides under the field "Identifiers". Presumably the Ebscohost keywords provided are in some sense the "real" keywords though Meyer & Schvaneveldt did not provide keywords -- APA or someone else decided what they should be because APA has only required keywords in recent times. There is another interface on the APA website and I'll leave it as an exercise for the interested reader to see whether/how it differs from the above. . Doesn't it seem strange that "lexical decision task" is not among the keywords given the impetus that this article gave to the use of the lexical decision task? Indeed, if one uses "lexical decision task" as a keyword, and Meyer and Schvaneveldt as authors, this article is missed. What a reader or researcher might consider to be keywords may differ from what the people who came up with them decided to use. (3) In summary: (a) although people tend to think of PsycInfo as a generic source of information, there appear to be different versions which contain different sources and label info about the sources somewhat differently and (b) Keywords may be evident in one version of PsycInfo but not in another, indeed,other fields (e.g., "Subjects"/"Descriptors") might appear to be keywords, and (c) it is not always clear that "Keywords" are helpful in searching PsycInfo, especially when they miss very relevant sources. [Snip} >Mike Palij: "For example, consider the role of the "Running head", quoting >from >p229 6th ed, 4th printing, APA Publication Manual: >Now, why would one want a running head on every page in a student paper? >Wouldn't the old convention of typing a few descriptive words or from the >title >in front of the page number be more appropriate (as was done in the 5th ed)? >I >put keywords into a similar category: if you're going to publish, use them >otherwise don't bother. Similarly, given the power of word processing >programs, why should tables and figures be put at the end of the paper instead >of at an appropriate location within the text? And so on." > >RF: The old convention was to type a short title on every page and a running >head on the first page. With the advent of the word processor, the header only >has to be typed once so there doesn't seem to be much problem with including >the full running head at the top of every page instead of just in a special >place on the title page. I'm sorry but the running head has to written TWICE: once on the cover page with "Running head:" and subsequent pages without "Running head:" I continually have students ask me how to do this in Word. But that is beside the point: why do we need a running head at all? There is not a printer who is going to set it so it will appear the published page. Why not just have a brief header prior to the page number or, since masked/blind review isn't going to be used in grading, something like this: [Flush right] "Student name"/"Course Number & Section"/Semester Year/Brief Title/Page Number Now, IMHO, that is a useful and informative piece of information at the top of each page. [snip] >If you are just teaching research paper writing as an >academic thought exercise or a game of pretend-research, then maybe there is >no >need to write them up in any particular format. I would rather hold my >students >to the standards of actual research report writing if I want them to learn as >much as possible about the process of conducting research and reporting >findings. I applaud your goals and as someone who has supervised a few issues of undergraduate research journals in my time, my opinion is that they provide some useful experience. However, if your undergraduate are trying to get an "authentic experience" in submitting their work to the undergraduate journal, I have to ask the following: (A) What is the rejection rate for the undergraduate journal and how does it compare to, say, the rejection rates of the first tier of APA journals; see: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/2009-operations.pdf (B) What is the lag between submission and publication? If you are providing an "authentic experience" about doing and presenting research, I assume that you would try to match the experience in the "real world" (including providing peer reviews that appear to be based on some other paper but are allegedly for the submitted paper and the editorial office losing reviews comments). How authentic is authentic? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=10601 or send a blank email to leave-10601-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
