LibGuides: Psychology (PSYC): Find peer reviewed articles

Find peer reviewed articles

Begin by identifying what databases are most relevant to your specific research question and discipline. For psychological research, PsycINFO is the primary research database; however, given the interdisciplinary nature of the field, it's highly beneficial to also search other specialized subject databases for relevant studies, such as ERIC for education related research questions or MEDLINE for medicine.

Always search multiple databases—ideally a thoughtful mix of specialized subject-specific resources and broader, multidisciplinary ones like Web of Science or Google Scholar. This multi-database approach is essential to minimize bias and ensure wide coverage, recognizing that no single database indexes all relevant literature.

Additionally, consider incorporating grey literature to gain a more complete and nuanced understanding of a topic, often including recent findings, niche perspectives, or practical applications not found in traditional scholarly publications.

Key Databases

PsycINFO
Resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health by the American Psychological Association (APA). It contains over 3 million records and summaries dating as far back as the 1600s with one of the highest DOI matching rates in the publishing industry. Journal coverage, which spans from the 1800s to the present, includes international material selected from around 2,500 periodicals in dozens of languages.
PsycARTICLES
Source of full text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in psychology from the American Psychological Association (APA). It contains more than 153,000 articles from nearly 80 journals published by the APA, its imprint the Educational Publishing Foundation (EPF), and from allied organizations including the Canadian Psychological Association. Coverage spans 1894 to the present.
CogNet (MIT Press)
Developed by The MIT Press, MIT CogNet is an online location for the brain and cognitive science community’s scientific research and interchange. Since breaking ground in 2000, MIT CogNet has become an essential resource for those interested in cutting-edge primary research across the range of fields concerned with understanding the nature of the human mind.

PsyArXiv
A free pre-print service for the psychological sciences.

Multidisciplinary Databases

Web of Science
Reliable, integrated, multidisciplinary research. Information on emerging trends, subject specific content and analysis tools. Includes Science Citation Expanded®, Social Sciences Citation Index®, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index™.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.

Subject Specific Databases

ERIC (EBSCO)
Gain immediate access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index with ERIC.
Medline with Full Text (EBSCO)
Provides the authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and pre-clinical sciences found on MEDLINE, plus the database provides full text for more than 1,470 journals indexed in MEDLINE.

Can't find an article?

1. Familiarize yourself with the jargon and narrow down your topic

Course reserves (including textbooks), required readings, and reference resources (https://libguides.uvic.ca/psychology/reference) are a great way to familiarize yourself with a topic.
Once you identify a topic and find some preliminary information, you need to locate more "peer-reviewed" or "scholarly" (www.uvic.ca/library/research/tips/scholvpop/index.php) information.

2. Read the sources located in the preliminary research to determine:

what research questions have been generated from the topic
from what perspective you may approach this topic

3. Find articles using databases

Search using key concepts and keywords in databases like Library Search (https://www.uvic.ca/library/index.php), Google Scholar and Web of Science (https://webapp.library.uvic.ca/databases/details.php?id=80&return=letter__W) databases.
Check the APA Psychology Topics page (www.apa.org/topics/index.aspx) for a list of subjects.
Make an appointment with Monique (https://libcal.uvic.ca/appointments/monique), for more help with starting your research and locating articles.