An Overlap Analysis of Occupational Therapy Electronic Journals Available in Full-Text Databases and Subscription Services

Judy Schroeder, Health Sciences Librarian, Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, MI

Objective Results Conclusion

In order to convert occupational therapy journal subscriptions from print to electronic, a university library, in collaboration with its Occupational Therapy Program, compares full-text databases and journal subscription services. This comparison is designed to identify the best combination of databases and individual subscriptions for the highest number of electronic titles and the best years of coverage for each title.

Methods

Results

1. Compilation of a master list of current electronic journals that support occupational therapy, totaling 141, and including the following:• 51 journals indexed by OT Search• 98 journals from the 120 most cited list• Five journals most requested on interlibrary loan• Two journals requested by GVSU occupational therapy faculty

2. Journals indexed in OT Search including the following:• 25 with the words “occupational therapy” in the title or newsletters

published by the American Occupational Therapy Association• 12 physical rehabilitation journals• 14 gerontology, education, and psychology journals

3. Journals from the 120 most cited journals list including the following:• Eight journals have the words “occupational therapy” in the title• Ten rehabilitation journals • 80 education, gerontology, medicine, psychology, psychiatry, movement

science, leisure, social science and other journals

4. Journals requested by GVSU faculty including the following: • Occupational therapy and rehabilitation journals both national and

international

5. Databases and their respective number of journals that support occupational therapy

6. Databases and their respective number of journals indexed in OT Search

12. Database combinations and their respective number of journals that support occupational therapy

13. Database combinations and their respective number of journals indexed in OT Search

14. Database combinations and their respective number of journals from the 120 most cited list

15. Database combinations and their respective number of overlapped titles

Although electronic coverage of occupational therapy journals can be found in most allied health or medical databases, no one database is comprehensive. The best electronic coverage occurs with the combination of two databases supplemented by individual subscriptions from subscription services. The best combinations of databases are those which yield the highest number of occupational therapy e-journals, those which have minimal overlap of titles, those which have a good balance of occupational therapy titles (both titles from within the profession of occupational therapy and titles outside of the profession from allied health and medicine which support occupational therapy), and those which contain adequate coverage for other allied health and medical programs at the host institution. Various database combinations result in different outcomes, any one of which can be suitable for an institution, depending on its needs and budget.

1. Compilation of a master list of occupational therapy journals and journals that support occupational therapy by combining the following:

• The 68 journal titles indexed in OT Search• The 120 most cited journals in a list compiled by Kathlyn L. Reed in

“Mapping the Literature of Occupational Therapy” in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 87, no. 3 (July, 1999): 298-304, which ranked journals by the number of cited references in occupational therapy

• Five additional journals recommended by the faculty of the Grand Valley State University Occupational Therapy Program

• Five additional journals appearing on a list of those most requested on interlibrary loan by the Occupational Therapy Program at Grand Valley State University

2. Compilation of a master list of current occupational therapy electronic journals and journals that support occupational therapy by the following:

• Checking the journals on the master list for current titles and availability in electronic format in Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory and Serials Solutions, then eliminating those journals which have ceased or which are not available in electronic format

3. Compilation of lists of databases and subscription services that contain years of coverage for the occupational therapy journals in each by the following:

• Identifying databases and subscription services that carry electronic journals for the health sciences in Serials Solutions

• Identifying occupational therapy journals with years of coverage in each database and subscription service in Serials Solutions

• Recording the total number of journals that support occupational therapy in each database and subscription service, as well as the total number of journals indexed in OT Search, the total number of journals appearing on the 120 most cited list, and the total number of appearances of the three most often cited journals (American Journal of Occupational Therapy, Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and OTJR: Occupation, Participation and Health)

• Entering the above information into the first tab of an Excel file, available on the NLM 2008 Conference website after the conference

4. Overlap analyses of several databases to identify those that yield the highest number of occupational therapy journals by the following:

• Combining the occupational therapy journal contents of two databases• Compiling totals of occupational therapy journals in the two combined

databases as well as totals of unique and overlapped titles in the two combined databases

• Conducting an overlap analysis of the total contents of the two databases in Serials Solutions to obtain total unique titles in each database and total overlapped titles

• Entering the above information into the second tab of an Excel file, available on the NLM 2008 Conference website after the conference

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ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source

ProQuest Medical Library

CINAHL Plus with Full-Text

Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition

Nursing Resource Center (Gale)

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#12 #13 #14 #15

ProQuest Nursing with CINAHL Plus

ProQuest Nursing with Health Source

ProQuest Nursing with SportDiscus

ProQuest Medical with CINAHL Plus

ProQuest Nursing with ProQuest Medical

7. Databases and their respective number of journals from the 120 most cited list

8. Databases and their respective number of the three most cited journals

9. Subscription services offering journals that support occupational therapy:

• EBSCOhost (a total of 103)• Journals @ Ovid (a total of 43)• Highwire Press (a total of 21)

10. Years of coverage in the databases: • Most recent five to ten years, occasionally more or fewer than five to ten

years, occasionally embargos from six months to a year and six months

11. Years of coverage in the subscription services: • Five to 14 years, occasionally fewer, and occasionally the entire run of a

journal • More years of coverage than there were in the databases in many cases• Years of coverage not available in the databases in many cases

• ProQuest databases and EBSCO databases examined in this study complemented one another when combined by yielding minimal numbers of overlapped and higher numbers of combined occupational therapy titles. Database combinations of the same vendor had more than desirable numbers of overlapped titles. • ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source with CINAHL Plus with Full-Text yielded the highest number of journals which support occupational therapy, yet the number of overlapped titles in the entire combined databases may not be cost effective for some institutions. • ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source and Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition from EBSCO yielded a high number of journals which support occupational therapy, yet the overlapping in this combination may be acceptable to some institutions. • ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source and SportDiscus Full-Text from EBSCO yielded an appropriate number of journals which support occupational therapy including a high number of rehabilitation journals. These had the least number of overlapped journals among any of the database combinations here, making them cost effective.

• ProQuest Medical Library and CINAHL Plus with Full-Text yielded an appropriate number of journals which support occupational therapy and had a relatively low number of overlapped journals. This combination had the least number of journals indexed in OT Search and the most from the 120 most cited journals list. For those institutions which have medical programs, the ProQuest Medical Library database may be preferable to ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source. • Since individual subscriptions of occupational therapy journals are available from several subscription services, it is easy to supplement titles which are missing from the databases, if necessary. • Some duplication of titles in databases with titles in subscription services may be desirable to increase years of coverage for journals cited most often.

• Since a high percentage of occupational therapy articles is published in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy, it may be necessary to acquire coverage from a subscription service for databases in which there is no coverage or in which additional coverage is desired.