Abstracts

 

Abstracts

Beyond citations, database can also offer abstracts, which are short summaries of the resource.  They can be used to quickly determine whether an article is appropriate for your topic.  The abstracts can be provided by the author of the article or created by the database.  For example, here is the abstract from the article from the Journal of Labor Research:

“This study examines whether the low-skilled employment effects of minimum wage increases differ over the state business cycle.  Controlling for spatial heterogeneity via state-specific productivity shocks to the low-skilled sector and state-specific non-linear time trends, the results suggest that minimum wage increases between 1989 and 2012 reduce low-skilled employment more during recessions than expansions.  Estimated employment elasticities with respect to the minimum wage range from 0 to -0.2 during state economic expansions, but reach as high as -0.3 during troughs in the business cycle.


 Some databases give access to the article immediately and are considered either full text or partial full text depending on how many articles are available in the database.