Tips for locating recent, peer-reviewed articles in Psychology

1)      Select an appropriate database:

Use the USF Libraries web site "Libraries & Collections" link, choose "collections," then "browse by subject." Select "psychology" or "medicine." The USF Libraries web site is available at: http://www.lib.usf.edu.    To locate recent, peer-reviewed journal articles, two good databases to use are PsycINFO (EBSCO) and ISI Current Contents Connect .

TIPS FOR USING PsycINFO

Produced by the APA, this database is considered the primary index to scholarly, psychological literature. Indexes articles in more than 1,300 journals as well as relevant books and book chapters.

• Begin with the online thesaurus (the link to the thesaurus is in the green bar near the top of the screen) Browse the thesaurus for the best subject heading(s).   Check for broader, narrower, or related topics that might also be useful for your research.
• Go to the Advanced Search screen (click on the green tab near the top of the screen), select a "subjects" search from the pull-down menus.   Enter your subject or subjects into the search boxes.
• In the limit fields below the search screen, check off "peer-reviewed."
• In the limit fields below the search screen, consider selecting a particular form/content type (such as "treatment outcome study" or "literature review/research review")
• In the limit fields below the search screen, limit your search to current dates (2003 to 2004).

TIPS FOR USING ISI Current Contents Connect   

As the title suggests, this resource provides some of the most current indexing available for journal articles. In addition to a searchable index, table of contents are provided for journals in the areas of Social & Behavioral Sciences (SBS), Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences (ABES), and the Life Sciences (LS). Updated daily.

• Click on the Start button to begin.
• Select the disciplines that you would like to include in your search (such as Social & Behavioral Sciences and Clinical Medicine).   You may select more than one discipline.
• Select the timeframe that you would like to search (last week, last six months, etc.)
• Click on "submit limit changes"

Enter a search in the search box:

• More than one subject may be entered in the box using the "and" command:        

                Alzheimers and treatment

               Environment*            (searches for environment or environmental)

                Environmental same factor*      

        (searches for the word environmental within the same sentence as the word factor(s))

•  To locate review articles , select "document type" from the pull-down menu next to the search box and type in review.

•  To combine a subject with a document type , perform the subject search, then the document type search, then combine the searches using the " set combination" selection in the pull-down menu next to the search box:

                                            Subject:                         alzhemier*                         (set #1)

                                            Document type:               review                              (set #2)

                                            Set combination:              #1 and #2

          The final results will be review articles published within the last six months on the topic of Alzheimer's.   Any previous search set may be combined with another using the "set combination" feature.   To locate environmental factors relating to Alzheimer's you may perform the following search:

                                            Subject:                      alzheimer*                             (set #4)

                                            Subject:                      environment* same factor*       (set #5)

                                            Set combination:              #4 and #5

2)      Select the articles that look most relevant to your research .   Be sure to write down all of the information that you will need to locate the full-text of the article and to cite it in your research paper.

3)     Locate the full-text of the article.   This can be accomplished in several ways:

•  Use the link.

•  Perform a title search on the title of the journal (not the article title) in the USF Libraries Online Catalog.  

•  Use the electronic journal finder located in the "find an article" section of the USF Libraries web site.

•  Click on the "full-text" link (when available) within the database.

Prepared by Tina Neville
March 2004