LibGuides: Psychology: Find Articles via Database

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Mearns Centre for Learning - McPherson Library
University of Victoria
PO Box 1800 STN CSC
Victoria, B.C., V8W 3H2
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(250) 721-8213

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.
CogPrints
CogPrints is a free, full-text e-print archive of published, peer-reviewed journal postprints plus prepublication unrefereed preprints in the cognitive sciences, covering psychology, behavioral biology, computer science, linguistics, philosophy and related disciplines.
PILOTS: Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress
Covers the Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress, and is produced at the headquarters of the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Vermont. Its goal is to include citations to all literature on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health sequelae of traumatic events, without disciplinary, linguistic, or geographical limitations, and to offer both current and retrospective coverage. Coverage 1871 - current.

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

Related Databases

PubMed
PubMed, developed by the National Library of Medicine, provides access to over 11 million citations from MEDLINE and additional life science journals. It covers the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. It is updated 5 times/week.

Scopus
Scopus indexes content from 25,000 active titles and 7,000 publishers to provide a comprehensive, curated abstract and citation database with enriched data and linked scholarly content.
Quickly find relevant and trusted research, identify experts via author profiles, and access reliable data, metrics and analytical tools.
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.

Can't find an article? Start here!

Familiarize yourself with the jargon and narrow down your topic

Look for scholarly sources on the topic: Course reserves (including textbooks), required readings, encyclopedias, Dictionaries and Handbooks 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" information from refereed journals (check your instructor's notes in your assignments)

Finding articles using databases

Search using key concepts and keywords in databases like Library Search, Google Scholar and PsycINFO databases
Use the "Find Articles" tab of this guide to find journal articles on your topic

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

More in-depth research on your topic

Use Boolean Operators AND, OR, NOT to combine search terms
Use Quotes to search as a phrase, parenthesis to combine synonyms or related terms, and use limits for dates, gender, primary sources, etc.
Finding it difficult to narrow down on a topic or understand terminology? Check the APA Psychology Topics page for a list of subjects.
Contact your subject librarian for more help with starting your research and locating articles