Welcome to Magale Library’s Doctoral Studies Guide!
This library guide provides resources to help students throughout their doctoral journey. The Magale Library and Getting Started on Your Doctoral Studies (Video) provides an introduction to many research and library usage aspects students experience in their doctoral courses. This guide provides links to resources and services by topic area. If further assistance is needed, please contact the library staff using the Ask A Librarian tool in the top-right of this webpage, emailing library@saumag.edu, or calling us at (870)235-4170. We are here to help!
Magale Library and Beginning Your Doctoral Journey (Video)
Academic Integrity
The mission of Southern Arkansas University empowers all members of the University community to develop and encourage learning environments that create, expand, acquire, share, evaluate, and communicate knowledge. Academic integrity at SAU is an organizational and individual responsibility. Students, faculty, and staff share responsibility for maintaining the highest standards for academic integrity.
SAU’s Academic Dishonesty and Integrity Policy
SAU’s Academic Integrity Videos:
Module 5 Academic Integrity Policy – Consequences
Doctoral Literature Review
Getting Started with Literature Reviews (Video) Learn how to set up your searches to save time locating relevant resources, including by subject and format.
How to Find Books, Videos, Magazines, and Other Materials within Magale Library (Video) Learn how to find resources within Magale Library! This tutorial introduces the basic concepts of searching and locating resources within Magale’s in-library collections.
How to Find E-Books, E-Articles, Videos, & Other Materials within Magale’s Electronic Collections (Video) Learn how to find resources within Magale’s electronic collections! This tutorial introduces the basic concepts of searching and locating resources within Magale databases and digital libraries. Attention is given to on and off-campus access of these resources.
Library Research Basics: Getting Started with Scholarly Resources and Magale’s Online Collections(Video) This webinar will provide an overview of getting started with the research process and using professional literature and academic videos for academic assignments. An introduction is provided to scholarly and peer-reviewed resources. Students will learn how to locate and use many of Magale’s electronic resources during the development of research papers and presentations.
When/Where to Cite Resources in Writing:
Many professionals construct their writing to stay focused on topics and support their claims. One way to do this is to consider the MEAL Plan for constructing paragraphs in writing. The MEAL Plan for paragraph construction emphasizes using four components: M – Main idea, E – Evidence, A – Analysis, and L- Lead statement. The first sentence of the paragraph is the main idea or central focus, followed by evidence sentences that cite authoritative resources supporting claims, followed by analysis statements, and then closing the paragraph with a statement leading back to the larger claim of the paper or work. Below resources offer direct explanations of how the MEAL Plan works:
Walden University’s Writing Center – Paragraphs: Organization (MEAL Plan)
Kennesaw State University’s Writing Center – MEAL Plan
Duke University’s Writing Studio – Paragraphing: The MEAL Plan
Subject/Topic Areas:
Subjects:
Health, Kinesiology, and Recreation
Nursing Research and Resources
Topics:
Locating resources by methodology (quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods)
Locating resources by theory (theoretical or conceptual framework)
Resources with Audio Components
Resource Guides For Biographies
Resource Guides For Images/Films
Dissertation Examples:
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global – is a wealth of unique global scholarship, which is a credible and quality source to Uncover the Undiscovered research insights and intelligence in easiest and most effective ways. The equitable discoverability of more than 5 million dissertations and theses with coverage from year 1637, allows researchers to amplify diverse voices and place their research in a global context. The database offers nearly 3 million full texts for most of the dissertations added since 1997.
Open Dissertations (EBSCO) – Created from a collaboration between EBSCO and BiblioLabs, EBSCO Open Dissertations™ is a new, free electronic theses and dissertations database offering access to more than 800,000 ETDs.
Related: Education Library Guide
Doctoral Literature Review Resource Management (Bibliographic Utility)
Zotero – Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research. (This includes citing and referencing in MLA, APA, ACS, ASME, and Chicago styles.
Getting Started with Zotero: Using Zotero for Collecting, Organizing, and Citing Resources (Video) This webinar provides an overview of how to set up a Zotero account and use the application to collect, organize, and manage citations and references for resources.
Doctoral Writing Resources
American Psychological Association (APA) Writing Style Guide see “Style and Grammar Guidelines”
Citing Resources (MLA 9th / APA 7th) This is a video tutorial with details and explanations about the basics of citations and references, including how to set them up for the most commonly used resources. The video tutorial focuses on MLA 9th edition and APA 7th edition writing styles.
Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) see APA formatting and Style Guide
Support Your Claims! An Introduction to Incorporating Library Resources in Academic Assignments(Video) This webinar will provide an introduction to incorporating resources into academic writing and presentation assignments. Students will learn the basics for using scholarly and peer-reviewed library resources to support their claims.
APA Citation Basics: Citing Books, Journal Articles, and Webpages (APA 7th Edition)
- Focus on the basics of citing books, journal articles, and webpages.
- Attention will be given to in-text and parenthetical citations and Reference list references.
- Students will also learn about Magale’s APA Style resources and other useful tools relating to this unique writing style.
Related: Citation/Reference Resources
