Academic Search Premier Facts

From Bplsst

You probably use or recommend Academic Search Premier a lot. And you probably think that you can only find bibliographic citations and fulltext articles from the 1990s on. Not so.


Contents

[edit] Academic Search Still Does the Recent Past Best

The vast majority of Academic Searches articles come from the recent past. Of the sources dated between January 2000 and December 2004, Academic Search Premier provided over 4.5 million bibliographic citations, and over 2.3 million fulltext articles. That's more than the entire decade for the 1990s in both categories.


[edit] But It Does the More Distant Past Better Than Ever

After computers became ubiquitous in publishing, more magazines than ever provided the content from that point on to Academic Search Premier and other databases. But it remained rare for older content to be converted and uploaded until only recent times. Ten years ago only a few sources were available in fulltext online. Now you have to check the databases to be sure.

The database description of Academic Search Premier says that well over a hundred journals have fulltext going back to 1975 or before. I believe it is probably a great deal more than this now. For instance, there are at least 14 journal titles related to psychology with fulltext articles available for the year 1975.

[edit] And Some Crazy Old Stuff

A few, mind you, a few, magazines and or other materials are indexed a lot further than you've probably imagined. The oldest records in Academic Search Premier belong to Nation magazine. In fact, for many years it is the only thing indexed. Surprisingly, the records go back to July 1865. The next major source index shows up with records dating back to April 1887--The Harvard Law Review. Unlike The Nation, The Harvard Law Review is available in fulltext, all the way back to 1887.


[edit] Fulltext from before the Fifties

Here's a list of magazines and journals and when fulltext becomes available

  • Harvard Law Review--1887
  • Annals of the Association of American Geographers--1911
  • California Law Review--1912
  • Acta Zoologica--1920
  • Congressional Digest--1921
  • Foreign Affairs--1922
  • American Literature--1929
  • Child Development--1930
  • Saturday Evening Post--1931
  • Vital Speeches of the Day--1934
  • Modern Language Quarterly--1940
  • Journal of Clinical Psychology--1945
  • Journal of Personality--1945
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