Subject Guides: Psychology: Articles

Databases

Psychology Databases

APA PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection This link opens in a new window
APA PsycArticles This link opens in a new window
PEP: Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing This link opens in a new window The PEP Web Archive has been designed to provide a powerful rapid search of the entire psychoanalytic literature in English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Turkish.
PTSDpubs This link opens in a new window PTSDpubs, formerly known as PILOTS, is a freely available, bibliographic database providing access to the worldwide literature on PTSD and other mental health consequences of traumatic events.

Psychological Tests Databases

PsycTESTS This link opens in a new window
Produced by the American Psychological Association (APA), PsycTESTS serves as a repository for a growing selection of psychological tests and measures, including thousands of actual test instruments and test items that are available for immediate download and use in research and teaching.
Mental Measurements Yearbook This link opens in a new window
Contains descriptive information and critical reviews of new and revised tests from the 9th-15th Yearbooks. The database covers more than 2,200 commercially-available tests in categories such as personality, developmental, behavioral assessment, neuropsychological, achievement, intelligence and aptitude, educational, speech and hearing, and sensory motor.
Tests in Print This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive bibliography to all known commercially available tests that are currently in print in the English language. TIP provides vital information to users including test purpose, test publisher, in-print status, price, test acronym, intented test population, administration times, publication date(s), and test author(s) ... Also guides readers to critical, candid test reviews published in the Mental measurements yearbook (MMY) series

Science, Social Science, and Medical Databases

PubMed This link opens in a new window PubMed is a service of the National Library of Medicine that includes over 35 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to the 1950s and selectively back to the 19th century. PubMed includes links to full text articles through PubMed Central (PMC) and other related resources.
MEDLINE This link opens in a new window MEDLINE provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window Web database for scientific research that contains abstracts, articles and full text of more than 1000 Elsevier Science journals in the life, physical, medical, technical, and social sciences. Skidmore's access to full text is limited to subscribed titles.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window

Multidisciplinary Databases & Scholarly Search Engines

Google Scholar Not everything in Google Scholar may be as scholarly as you need and/or peer reviewed, so make sure you evaluate the sources you find!

Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window Academic Search Ultimate offers access to resources cited in key subject indexes. The combination of academic journals, magazines, periodicals, reports, books and videos meets the needs of scholars in virtually every discipline ranging from astronomy, anthropology, biomedicine, engineering, health, law and literacy to mathematics, pharmacology, women’s studies, zoology and more.
Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new window

Journals Search

Evaluate Journals

Journal Citation Reports This link opens in a new window
Evaluate and compare journals using citation data drawn from scholarly and technical journals from publishers in over 80 countries.
Essential Science Indicators This link opens in a new window
Performance statistics and trends for journals.

Characteristics of Popular Sources

Publications often focus on a variety of topics or within a larger discipline.
Authors are typically staff writers or journalists.
Articles are written for the general public.
Articles tend to be shorter in length and provide more general information.
Sources are rarely listed within or at the end of an article.

Characteristics of Scholarly Sources

Publications often focus on a specific discipline or sub-discipline.
Authors are typically scholars and/or researchers.
Articles are written for faculty/researchers using technical terms and jargon.
Articles tend to be longer and focus on a very specific aspect of a topic.
Sources will be listed throughout and at the end of an article.

Peer Review

Also known as Refereed, peer review is a process where articles submitted to a journal for publication are reviewed by the author's peers (other scholars and researchers in the same field). These peers determine if the article should be published and will also make recommendations for edits to the article before publication.

Video created by North Carolina State University Library

Limiting to Peer Reviewed Articles in the Databases

Most databases will offer a tool to limit your results to only articles from peer reviewed journals.

No Peer Review Limiter

If you are in a database that does not offer a tool like this and must use a peer reviewed article, you can search the journal's website. Usually, the website will provide information about the scope of the journal and whether articles go through a peer review process.

Research Tip #1: Look at the Bibliography

If you've found a source that works well for your research, look at their bibliography. There's probably going to be a couple of sources that they've used that you should use as well.

Research Tip #2: See Who Else Has Cited a Source

Google Scholar and many of our databases have a "Cited By" or "Times Cited" tool that lets you see what other sources have cited an article. If you've got a good article, see who else cited it. You'll probably find a couple of other sources relevant to your research.

The Subject Terms part of an article record from a library database

Research Tip #3: Look at the Subject Terms

Many of our databases will assign Subjects or Subject Terms to the articles, identifying the main topics of that article. Look at the Subject Terms to see if there are other search terms you should be trying in a database.

Lucy Scribner Library

Psychology: Articles

Databases

Journals Search

Research Tip #1: Look at the Bibliography

Research Tip #2: See Who Else Has Cited a Source

Research Tip #3: Look at the Subject Terms