Psychology: finding journal articles

A journal, or periodical, is a publication which contains articles written by academics, researchers or experts in a subject area. To find journal articles on your topic you need to search a bibliographic database (WebCat and TDNet hold information about journal titles held in the Library, but not individual journal article references).

The bibliographic databases listed below allow you to search thousands of journal articles by keyword, author or other criteria. They contain full bibliographic details of the articles and normally an abstract, but not usually the full text of the article. To access the full text you need to check WebCat (the Library catalogue) or TDNet (our electronic journals gateway) to see if each journal title is held in print by the University Library and/or whether it is available electronically. Please note that you can only access the full text of articles via WebCat if you have logged on with your University ID number and Library PIN (available from all Loans and Enquiries desks).

All the main Psychology databases now require your Institutional login.

In order to get access to the maximum range of electronic services provided by the Library, you will need to set-up Virtual Private Network (VPN) access on your computer at home.

 

PsycINFO Basic guide to PsycINFO Advanced guide to PsycINFO 

On campus/VPN [Log into PsycINFO]

Off campus & non-VPN [Log into PsycINFO]

PsycINFO, from the American Psychological Association (APA), contains nearly 2.4 million citations and summaries of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, in all psychology and related disciplines, dating as far back as the 1800s. 98 percent of the covered material is peer-reviewed. Journal coverage, which spans 1887 to present, includes international material selected from more than 2,200 periodicals in more than 27 languages.

PsycARTICLES

On campus/VPN [Log into PsycARTICLES]

Off campus & non-VPN [Log into PsycARTICLES]

PsycARTICLES, from the American Psychological Association (APA), is a definitive source of full-text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in psychology. The database contains more than 134,000 articles from 63 journals - 50 published by the APA and its imprint, the Educational Publishing Foundation (EPF) - and 13 from allied organisations. It includes all journal articles, book reviews, letters to the editor, and errata from each journal. Coverage spans 1894 to present; nearly all APA journals go back to Volume 1, Issue 1.

ISI Web of Knowledge

[Log into WoK]

ISI databases contain:

  • References with author abstracts, where available, from 8000+ peer-reviewed journals.
  • Coverage from 1981 onwards, updated weekly.
  • Access to cited references so you can trace who has cited a particular article.

MEDLINE (1950-present) is now available on the ISI Web of Knowledge Platform. The functionality of this interface enables users to access MEDLINE with the added value of citation data and navigation, as well as the ability to simultaneously to search WoK resources to which the University of Southampton Library subscribes.

You can search across all databases or select the one you feel will be most useful for your topic. Most of the psychology journals are covered by the Social Science Citation Index but topics like psychiatry, neuroscience and medicine are included under Science.

Other databases

If you are studying health psychology, you may find relevant material by using MEDLINE This database contains bibliographic details and abstracts of articles from over 3,000 medical journals and covers material published from 1966. MEDLINE can also be accessed via Web of Knowledge as listed above.

In addition, EMBASE which includes material from 1980 to the present indexes articles from over 3,500 journals in the fields of biomedical sciences. EMBASE is also very thorough in its coverage of European publications and can therefore be a useful database to search in addition to the more US-oriented database MEDLINE

The Cochrane Library aims to be the "best single source of reliable evidence about the effects of health care" and provides access to the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

A list of other databases relevant to this area of your subject is available from the Health Services Library pages.

If you are studying educational psychology you may also be interested in:

ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center, which is sponsored by the US Department of Education). This provides references and abstracts from 1966 onwards, covering over 775 journals and also includes teaching materials.

British Education Index produced by the University of Leeds. This resource provides access to references and abstracts published from 1976 onwards in over 350 journals and includes conference papers.

IBSS (International Bibliography of the Social Sciences). This database is produced by the Library at the London School of Economics and provides bibliographic references from 1951 onwards. Current data is taken from over 2400 journals and 7000 books each year and is updated weekly. This database is particularly strong in economics, sociology, anthropology and politics.

CogPrints: Cognitive Sciences E-print Archive

[Log into CogPrints]

A full text electronic archive of papers covering any areas of science relevant to the study of cognition. You will need to register to make full use of the database but it is free to do this. You can search or browse the database and there is an alert service so you can receive emails informing you of new papers in your subject area.