A Practitioners Guide to Accessing A Peer Reviewed Academic Journal Article

Now, this is the million-dollar question. How do I implement evidence based practice if I can't access academic journal articles?  You're right, it's a valid question, and a valid problem. Hopefully today we can solve it. These steps aren't for those of you who are students that have access to University databases. If you are a student and aren't sure how to access articles, go to your university library and ask to make an appointment with a research librarian and they'll put you in the right direction. If you're a practitioner and aren't sure what evidence based practice is, in short, it's using interventions, modalities, and practices that have been clinically studied. For a more in-depth description, I recommend a quick Google search using terms like "recreational therapy evidence based practice" and reviewing some of the top results. For the rest of you, I recommend these steps:

1.       Identify an article that may be useful for your practice. You won't know for sure if it is useful, but the title and abstract (summary) can tell you if it's worth reading the entire article. Two great places to start would be the Therapeutic Recreation Journal and the American Journal of Recreation Therapy.  RT Wise Owls is a user friendly database that's specific to recreational therapy. There may be plenty of other articles that are relevant to your practice that aren't in recreational therapy specific journals. They may be found in journals relating to leisure, recreation, specific interventions, or diagnoses. Google Scholar is a great resource for broader searches. If by some stroke of luck you have found an article and can access the full version you are done here at step one, but most likely you have found an article and can only read the abstract because the full article is behind a paywall. Lucky for you, I have some solutions.

2.       Check if you still have access to your previous university library database. Some schools restrict access quickly, while others wait quite a while! If you have access, search the article title through the school's library website and see if you can get the full article.

3.       Use your local library. Most people don’t realize that many local libraries offer free access to tons of academic journals. Start by signing up for a library card. Often, this can be done online. Every library operates a bit differently, so you will have to spend some time navigating the website and familiarizing yourself. If you can’t clearly find how to find academic articles on the website or through their search, you may want to Google search "<<insert library name>> academic journal articles." Oftentimes, libraries will offer academic articles through a third-party website, which may require an additional login using your library card number. If you still are unable to locate if/where academic journal articles are found on the website, I suggest either calling or going to your library in person, and you may want to do both. Like any customer service provider, sometimes you just don’t get the right person and it may be worth it go in person with a big smile. Overall, librarians are typically extremely knowledgeable, and will gladly point you in the right direction. If either your local library does not offer academic journal articles, or they don’t subscribe to the journal in which your article is in, ask if you can request it via interlibrary loan. Libraries will literally order a book from 3,000 miles away to be mailed to their library for you, free of charge, so finding an online article shouldn’t be a massive hassle.

4.       Email the author(s) and ask for the article! People don’t often know that this is an acceptable practice, but it is. Abstracts are widely available, so read those, make a list of a few articles that you would like to read, type a short, polite email, and request a copy of the article. Don’t forget to tell the author you’re interested in their research and want to apply it to your practice. They'll likely to be happy to hear that; that's why they did the research.

5.       Post on an RT forum and ask someone with university affiliation to download the article and send you the PDF. There are plenty of recreational therapy pages between Facebook and LinkedIn, and they are filled with students and professors, someone will help you out!

Happy journal hunting! If you're still in school don't forget to read How to Study for the NCTRC Exam!