Have you ever identified a peer-reviewed research study that you thought could be really useful to your coalition work only to find that you could only access it at a high cost or not at all? Our Evaluation and Research team at CADCA recently came across a useful resource that we wanted to pass on to the rest of the field and while it might not solve all of your woes when it comes to accessing research, we think it might help a lot!
DeepDyve (www.deepdyve.com) is an interactive database designed to provide individuals, communities, and organizations with up-to-date, peer-reviewed academic journal articles at the click of a button. First-time users can create an account to receive a free two-week trial and after that a subscription is only $40 per month. Although the articles are only available online, and not for print, there are some really good features available for organizing articles and DeepDyve will even send you suggestions for articles that you might be interested in as they are available. Journals available using this resource address a wide range of fields to include public health, public policy, political science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, education, medicine, and law, among many others.
It is critical that coalitions keep up-to-date on the most recent research available to topics relevant to their organizations. While not all journals are available on DeepDyve, there are many that CADCA has found useful and that coalitions should have on their radar. Examples of some that are available on DeepDyve are: The American Journal of Community Psychology, The American Journal of Public Health, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, Health Promotion Practice, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Substance Use & Misuse, Health Education Research, The Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, The Journal of Research on Adolescence, The Drug and Alcohol Review, and Evaluation of Program Planning.
Other very important journals for our field not available on DeepDyve are Prevention Science, which can be accessed through a membership to the Society for Prevention Research, The Journal of Community Health and the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. In addition, CDC’s Preventing Chronic Disease is a free open-access resource.
For a complete list of journal articles that are most relevant for coalition work, feel free to contact CADCA’s Evaluation and Research Department at evaluation@cadca.org. We also encourage you to visit www.cadca.org/ for bi-monthly research information synthesized by CADCA to support your community-level efforts.
