Research Guides: *Psychology: Journal Articles

Journal Indexes

PsycINFO (ProQuest)
Coverage of research in applied psychology, developmental psychology, personality, and more.
Web of Science
The premier research platform to find and analyze scholarly research literature on Sciences, Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities. Includes proceedings of international conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions.

More databases

PsychiatryOnline
A leading online source of journal and book information on psychiatry and related sub-specialties. Includes access to the DSM-V.
PubMed Central (PMC)
PMC is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).

ProQuest One Business
An intuitive and comprehensive business library containing millions of full-text items across scholarly and popular periodicals, newspapers, market research reports, dissertations, books, videos and more.

Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

“Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning.”

Psychology Information Literacy - Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL)

How to Read and Understand Social Science Journal Articles

1. How to Read (and Understand) a Social Science Journal Article ?

Journal articles can appear daunting and often make for dense, dry reading, but they generally follow a standardized format. Once you understand the structure of each article, knowing where to look for important information and understanding the content becomes much easier.

2. Why are journal articles important?

Scholarly journal articles generally contain the following elements:

The authors are scholars or researchers with known affiliations and credentials.
The article contains full citations to other scholarly sources
Scholarly articles are often peer reviewed by experts before being accepted for publication.

Research literature can be defined as written reports from research studies. There are many types of research literature, with published research articles representing the most common source for research literature. Other sources include dissertations, books, and internet websites. Published research articles, for some, are considered the most trustworthy type of research literature. When identifying articles, it is most important to consider the origin of the work.

Psychology Information Literacy

Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

Psychology Information Literacy - Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL)