Research Tool Updates: Atla Annual 2020 Online

From June 17-19, the Atla team successfully hosted its first entirely virtual conference. Working together, the Business Development and Production teams developed a presentation highlighting recent updates to Atla’s research tools and strategic initiatives. Over 100 attendees from around the world tuned in to the live presentation, making it the largest event ever for Atla’s research tools. Below is a highlight reel of the top updates shared. You can also watch the full presentation here.

New Facts & Figures

Atla Religion Database^® (Atla RDB^®) now includes more than 2.9 million records, with more than 1,080 journals currently being indexed.

Starting with just 50 full-text titles in 2001, Atla now offers more than 530 full-text journals from around the world. AtlaSerials^® (Atlas^®) includes about 360 of these journals, while AtlaSerials PLUS^® (Atlas PLUS^®), includes all of the full-text journals in Atlas plus an additional 170 or so that are exclusive to Atlas PLUS.

We now include content from 76 countries across all of our research tools, and our in-house team now has indexing capabilities in more than 40 languages.

All of the facts, figures, and title lists for all Atla research tools, including but not limited to, Atla Religion Database, Atlas, and Atlas PLUS, are now updated to reflect the most recent content available. Learn more here.

Depth & Breadth: Expanding Coverage Areas

For Catholicism, this year, our team has added thirteen new titles for indexing to Atla Religion Database, plus one full-text journal slated for Atlas PLUS release later this month. These titles represent a wide range of global perspectives on Catholicism, from several countries, including Croatia, South Korea, Italy, and Lithuania.

For Islam and Islamic thought, our team has added eleven titles for indexing to Atla Religion Database. All eleven journals represent unique global viewpoints on Islam from several countries, including Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Russia.

For Judaism and Jewish Thought, our team has added four new titles for indexing, three of which are open access.

For Indigenous and folk religions, one notable full-text title in particular that we have added is Oral Tradition, an open access journal from Harvard University devoted to the study of the world’s oral traditions, past and present.

Additionally, our team has added thirteen new titles that cover various aspects of theology, as well as several interdisciplinary titles that cross over into other popular areas of study, including psychology, psychiatry, literature, and sociology.

Diversifying Content Forms

The Atla team is working to include more open access content in our research tools, ensuring ease of content discoverability and information access. Learn more here.

In collaboration with our publishing partners, our in-house team has been working to expand the indexing of essay collections and include robust metadata for this hard-to-find content in our research tools. Check out the latest highlight of our recently added essay collections.

For many years now, Atla has been committed to seeking out full text ceased journals and ensuring their scholarly significance persists by including them in our research tools. See the first in a quarterly series of blog spotlights on full-text ceased journals here.

Global Collaboration

We currently have 280 publisher relationships, with over 50% being publishers established outside of the U.S. These international publisher relationships account for 60% of our total licensed titles across all of our research tools, up to two percent from last year.  

Over the past year, our in-house licensing team has worked hard to build upon several long-standing publisher relationships to license dozens of new journals, adding to our geographic, linguistic, and content diversity. Check back later this month for a new series highlighting some of the multititle publisher relationships the Atla team continues to foster.

Partner Products

In addition to Atla Religion Database, Atlas, and Atlas PLUS, Atla has collaborated with institutions, organizations, and individuals to co-produce and offer additional research resources.

The Old Testament Abstracts (OTA) are produced in partnership with the Catholic Biblical Association, and feature abstracts for religion and theology journal articles, monographs, multi-author works, and software related to Old Testament studies. OTA recently received its annual content update.

Similarly, the New Testament Abstracts (NTA) are produced in partnership with Boston College and are a research and bibliographic aid for religion and theology scholars, librarians, clergy, and students of the New Testament and its historical milieu.

Atla EBSCO Historical Digital Archives

We also partner with EBSCO on several historical archives collections, including the Atla Historical Monographs Collections, which contain content from the 13th Century through 1922 and cover many topics, including the World Parliament of Religions, the changing landscape of religion in 20th century America, global theological perspectives and religious traditions, and more. 

We also offer the African American Historical Serials Collection, which was developed in partnership with EBSCO as part of an effort to preserve endangered serials related to African American religious life and culture. This collection was named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine.

Technical Updates

After a year of preparation by the Production Team, Atla is close to completing a vocabulary clean-up to adopt a (mostly) faceted vocabulary. For more specifics, learn more from Atla Editorial Manager Jill Annitto here.

An ongoing initiative of the Atla Production team is to include in our research tools (where possible) all volumes and issues of a journal, dating back to volume one, issue one. For Atla Religion Database, 54% of the journals our team currently indexes go back to vol 1 / issue 1. On the full-text side, across Atlas and Atlas PLUS, 75% of all full-text journals included goes back to vol 1 / issue 1.

We also conduct ongoing maintenance and enhancements of our tools, by actively incorporating feedback from our users and continually internally evaluating our research tools. Learn more about the enhancements we have implemented over the past year here.

Site Updates

The FAQ page on our website has been revamped with updated information and more user-friendly search experience. Learn more here. Check out the new page here.

Coming Up

In the next few months, a new series of tutorial videos for our research tools will be hosted on our website. Topics covered will include best practices, search tips, and more.

We want to know, what else do you want to know? Research tool tips? Content updates? Do you have content suggestions for inclusion in our tools? You can let us know by submitting the Contact Us form.

Watch the full 2020 Atla Research Tools Presentation