Is this article from a North American nursing journal?
You have an article or citation that you would like to use for your research project. The assignment requires that the article is from a North American nursing journal. What is a good way to determine if your citations/articles meet these criteria.
This article will show you some reliable methods for determining if the articles that you have found meet the criteria for this project.
The example citation below was selected because it is unclear if from the journal title if it is from a nursing journal. Most articles and citations also contain no information about where the journal the article came from was published.
Example citation
Lianou, L., Petropoulou, C., Lipsou, N., & Bouza, H. (2022). Difference in Mortality and Morbidity Between Extremely and Very Low Birth Weight Neonates. Neonatal Network, 41(5), 257–262.
Below are two methods to determine if your article/citation is from a North American nursing journal:
1. Find article record in CINAHL
-Go to the CINAHL database. Copy the title of the article (not the journal name) and paste it into the search box.
- In our example, we would copy “Difference in Mortality and Morbidity Between Extremely and Very Low Birth Weight Neonates” and paste it into the search box.
- Click on the title from the search results page. Note: If the search does not produce a result, there is a good chance that the article is not from a nursing journal. Go to the second method to double check).
- Clicking on the title from the results page will take you to a page containing information about the article, not the full text of the article. This information page generally contains an abstract, subject information and other key identifiers (language, publication type, etc…). Scroll down until you get to the “Journal Subset” section of the page.
- The journal subset field will indicate if the article is from a North American nursing journal. Look for the terms “core nursing” and “USA” or “Canada”.
2. Use AI
- Go to your favorite AI. For this example we will use the Perplexity AI tool
- AI tools often look like a Google search, but they allow you to ask questions in a more conversational tone. Your interactions with the AI are called “prompts”.
For our example, we might enter the prompt - Is “Neonatal Network” considered a North American nursing journal?”
The AI Tool will try to answer your question. AI tools can give incorrect or misleading answers though. Perplexity AI provides links to the sources of information that it uses for each answer.
These links appear as citation numbers within the text answer. Use these links to confirm the answer that the AI has provided for you.
Conclusion
We strongly suggest that you start your search with the CINAHL database for this assignment. The database has a variety of search filters that can be selected to limit your results to North American nursing journals. This will save you from having to take the extra steps of checking each citation to ensure they are from the proper journals. Take a look at our “North American Nursing Journal Search” video tutorial on Youtube to learn more.
Remember to contact the library if you need any research assistance. We can work with you over Zoom, via email or in person. Send an email at library@dyc.edu to contact us.