Librarian
reference@carleton.edu
LibKey Nomad
Core Psychology Databases
- PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
(Searches through citations, subject indexing, and abstracts)
The premier search tool for all areas of psychology and related disciplines. Covers 1840 - current.
Note: There are fewer than 115 records from earlier than 1894. - PubMed Central This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
(Searches through citations and the full text)
The US National Institutes of Health provide this free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. - Web of Science This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
(Searches through citations, subject indexing, and some full text)
A vast index of literature from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Also offers cited reference searching to see who has cited a particular document. 1898 - current.
Google Scholar
Sometimes the full text of an article is available for free through Google Scholar.
- Search Google Scholar for the article.
- Look at the right-hand side of the result list. Are there links there that lead you to the full text?
- Click on the "All x Versions" link below the result for the article. Are there versions that include the full text of the article?
Google Scholar video
Comparison of Psychology Databases
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PsycINFO | Web of Science | Google Scholar |
|---|---|---|---|
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What it is |
A database of scholarly articles, book chapters, and dissertations in Psychology. | A database of scholarly articles in all disciplines. It is designed to allow searching of citations. | Google’s search of scholarly articles. It covers most academic publishers and articles posted on college and university websites. |
| It's awesome for... | …doing a search on a topic in psychology, especially if you have parameters such a specific methodology, population, or a test/measure that you’re interested in. | …starting with an article and seeing who has cited it (and who has cited that…). Especially good for finding newer research. | …finding the full text of an article that you can’t find elsewhere, sometimes. Authors sometimes put their article up on the web, giving you free access. |
| What you need | List of key words or phrases that describe your topic. | List of key words or phrases, or the title of an article that you're interested in. | If you’re looking for a specific article, the title of that article. Or very specific key words and phrases. |
| Drawbacks | Does not search the full text or articles in disciplines outside of Psychology | Does not search the full text. | It can be hard to narrow results, no discipline-specific indexing. May take you to sites that ask for money to access them – please, DON’T pay for access to articles! |
| Search notes |
PsycINFO provides a lot of specialized limiters on the advanced search screen: You can limit results based Tests & Measures, Methodology (empirical study or literature review, for example), and Population. Use a different row for each different concept. Add synonyms for concepts in a box separated by the word OR (eg: college OR university). If you need help coming up with terms, check out the Thesaurus. The link is in the upper left corner. |
Once you’ve got a list of results, you can narrow it by keyword, subject, or type of document along the left side. When looking at an article:
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If the article is available for free, you’ll see a link to the right of the result. If you see “Carleton Full Text” link, the library has access to the article. Click it to get access. Off-campus? Go to Settings and then click Library Links and search for Carleton College. You'll see the "Full Text" links when we have the article. If there is no free access, click "More" and then "Check Library Holdings". Request the article via ILL from there. |
Finding Full Text Articles
This video is best viewed in full-screen.
