Psychology
Main type of publications in psychology
- Most of the psychological research is published in scholarly articles.
Searching articles
- Articles on psychology can be found in 1) the discipline's own databases and 2) multidisciplinary databases.
Also available are 3) article search in JYKDOK and 4) Google Scholar.
For more information on which is suitable for which situation, see below.
1) Psychological databases
- Comprehensive database of psychology; searchable by methodology, age group, gender, etc.
- Accessible in the Ebsco service, where can be found databases like Cinahl (for health sciences) and SportDiscus (for sport sciences), too.
- The list of journals on PsycINFO
- You can find the basic user guide in JYKDOK, check also APA guidelines:
- Quick Reference Guide PsycINFO on EBSCO (pdf, 288KB)
- The YouTube playlist for PsycINFO on EBSCOhost
- More limited full text database than PsycINFO. Includes the key journals in psychology.
- contains citations and abstracts to worldwide biomedical literature since the 1950's.
- comprises more than 22 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE.
- Database for educational science, with search limitation by e.g. educational level.
Good to know: Finnish scientific journal 'Psykologia'
- contains English summaries
- For now, the volumes of Psykologia journal are readable as printed versions only.
2) Multidisciplinary databases
- Scopus (Elsevier) (subject coverage: life sciences, health sciences, physical sciences, social sciences)
- JSTOR (subject areas: humanities, social sciences, economics, biology and ecology)
- Web of Science (Thomson Scientific) (provides 1) Science Citation Index Expanded, 2) Social Sciences Citation Index and 3) Arts & Humanities Citation Index)
In multidisciplinary databases, it is profitable to limit your search on sources in your field.
Multidisciplinary databases give an overview of how much research has been done on a subject. The search results are usually high, because these databases are not, as their name suggests, exclusively focused on psychology.
3) International articles search in JYKDOK
- Either 1) do a search and select the tab International articles search or 2) before searching, select the International articles search from the JYKDOK home page.
- You can limit the search results to peer-reviewed articles.
NOTE! Use the JYKDOK article tab for quick searches and when you already know the title of an article and want to find it. More specific searches are done in databases in your field.
4) Google Scholar
- Despite its name, Google Scholar also contains other than scientific information, so the scientific nature of the search results must always be assessed separately! Results cannot be limited to peer-reviewed publications / articles.
- NOTE! The number of citations an article has received ('cited by') does not directly indicate its scientific merit and reliability, as the service does not estimate who have done the citing.
- One way to assess this is to look at where the article was published and check the journal's ranking on the Publication Forum. A scientific journal has a level 1, 2 or 3.
TIP: For remote access, login to JYKDOK with your JYU ID to get more articles to read in Google Scholar instead of colliding the paywall.
Google Scholar can be used as a search gateway alongside the databases.
Finding books
- JYKDOK : to find books, go to our collection database (includes e.g. basic works and the text books)
- Handbook and method guides can be found for example by the search [the name of the discipline] AND "research methodology"
- Finna: books not in JYKDOK collection may be found in Finna, which is the union catalogue of Finnish libraries, museums and archives.
- Order books from other libraries using our interlibrary service.
Thesis
- Dissertations in the Finna database (narrow down the search results from Material type > Thesis > Dissertations).
- Interlibrary service
- University of Jyväskylä thesis and dissertations in JYKDOK.
Remember that thesis are not used as scientific sources, as they rarely correspond to the level of scientific research.
Information about research methods
Good to know: open access databases or journals
- PsyArXiv: a free preprint service for the psychological sciences
- PsychArchives : the Open Access Repository for Psychology, provided by the Leibniz Institute of Psychology Information (ZPID)
- In PsycINFO it is possible to choose the limitation 'Open Access'
- Psychiatria Fennica -journal
- Human technology -journal
- APA (American Psychological Association): some of the content freely in use
- PIRLS 2016 (information about teaching reading and its curriculum)
Other tips
- Library tutorial: a guide to scientific information seeking
- Basics for research data management
- Library: open science education
Instructions for most common problematic situations (e-books, payment walls etc.)
- For e-book and other e-resource users (translation in action)
- Find open access articles
- Suggest a purchase or order an interlibrary loan
Need help?
- Wondering how to find a book/magazine in the library, how to use e-books or magazines? Please visit the library service desk or contact us.
- Information seeking questions:
- Book a personal consultation (thesis authors, researchers, JYU staff)
- Information specialist Tytti Leppänen