Criminal Justice Abstracts is a database that collects articles from dozens of scholarly journals of criminal justice topics. Because of that, it should be your first stop when looking for the peer reviewed articles you need for your research paper. To access Criminal Justice Abstracts, follow these steps:
1. Open Criminal Justice Abstracts from the link on the front page of this guide, or by selecting it from the dropdown list of Databases on the front page of the library's website and hitting the Go button. Note: if you are off campus, the proxy will force you to enter your Potsdam credentials prior to giving you access to Criminal Justice Abstracts or any other library database.
2. Add your keywords to the search fields. If you have more than three keywords, you can add additional fields with the Add a row option. Be sure to check the Peer Reviewed box to make sure everything you get is a scholarly article and you can limit the date range of your search by using the Publication Date options.
3. The results screen will show you the articles found by your search. You can further refine your search to narrow things down by adding additional search terms at the top, or clicking the All filters button to open the list of filter options on the right.
4. The Peer reviewed - Academic journal icon shows that each article is considered a peer reviewed, academic/scholarly source, as required for your paper assignment.
Access the article by clicking the Access now (PDF) link or Access options dropdown, or, if it doesn't have one of those, the FIND IT link. Clicking the article's title in blue will take you to the individual article's catalog entry for more information on it.
5. An individual article's catalog entry will include its title and citation information at the top, Subject terms that will take you to all the other articles in Criminal Justice Abstracts on the same topic, and (lower down) the abstract that quickly explains the article's content.
The row of icons at the top right provide additional tools. The quotation mark provides citation information but these citations often have incorrect formatting, so always check them closely. The curved arrow icon provides means to save or share the article, including saving it to your Google Drive (the One Drive functionality is not currently active), emailing it to yourself, or getting a permanent link to the article through the Create link option.
VERY IMPORTANT: the URL at the top of the page is temporary and may not bring you back to this article. If you want a save a link, use the one made by the Create link option.
If you click the Find It button on an article and get this screen, it means the library does not subscribe to this journal. You can still get the article, though, by ordering it through Interlibrary Loan. To do this, log into your library account through the link under How to Get It, and then click the Request copy via Interlibrary Loan link. Note the eight digit numbers next to ISSN underneath the article's author. You will want to use those on the next page.
Clicking the request link will open this form, most of which should be pre-filled. If it isn't, simply add the required information. At the bottom of the form, copy one of the 8 digit ISSN numbers from the previous screen (if, as in our example, the article has two different 8-digit numbers, just pick one of them--it doesn't matter which) and paste them into the ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) field at the bottom. Doing so will automate the ordering process, which will really speed everything along. Then just hit the Submit Request button.
After you submit your request, our ILL system will seek out a library that subscribes for the journal & request a PDF copy of the article, and you'll receive an email informing you when it's available.
