Find & Evaluate Journals
UCSB E-Journals:
- E-Journals Collection (main search)
Evaluate Journals and Find Impact Factors
Locating Articles:
Click the 
button to find the full text of an article, either online or in print on the library shelves. If the library does not have access to the article you need, you can request the article to be sent to you through interlibrary loan.
If you already have a citation, first, use Google Scholar and search for the title of the article. Look for the link to the pdf or Get it at UC button on the right side. You may first need to Connect Google Scholar to UCSB Library Full-Text Resources. If you do not see the article, use the Citation Linker where you should see if the UCSB Library has access to it or use the Request function to request a copy through Interlibrary Loan.
Is an Article a Review Article?
Review articles synthesize information from previous studies. They are not original, empirical articles.
PsycInfo allows you to search by methodology and "literature review". If you are using a different database, you can add the keyword "review". Note that you may find results that include book reviews. Number of pages of an article can be a key indicator used to identify the difference between a review article and a book review, which will be very short.
Key Resources
- PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
Provides access to international literature in psychology, the behavioral sciences, and related disciplines from professional journals, book chapters, books, reports, and dissertations. Most citations include abstracts. In addition, there are millions of cited references in journal articles, books, and chapters.
- PsycArticles This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text articles of journals from the American Psychological Association, the APA Educational Publishing Foundation, the Canadian Psychological Association, and Hogrefe & Huber. Includes all material from the print journals with the exception of advertisements and editorial board lists.
- APA PsycTests
Produced by the American Psychological Association, this database provides access to thousands of test instruments, most of which are available for immediate download and use in teaching and research.
Videos & Tutorials on PsycINFO
- Use PsycINFO EffectivelyThis is a sample search of PsycINFO on the ProQuest platform. We use a search example question to illustrate how you can use the elements of a question to build a search with the thesaurus.
- How (and Why) to Use the APA Thesaurus When Searching PsycINFO via ProQuestThis tutorial demonstrates how (and why) to use the thesaurus when searching PsycINFO via ProQuest.
Ranking Journals
- Journal Citation Reports®You can view a group of journals by Subject Category, Publisher, Country/Territory. You can also search for a specific journal.
- Eigenfactor® ProjectSearch by Journal Name, ISSN, Publisher, Year, or ISI Category.
Additional Resources
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Scholarly, multi-disciplinary database covering thousands of journals and other publications. Includes full-text access to peer-reviewed journals, and indexing/abstracts for magazines, monographs, reports, and conference proceedings.
- Annual Reviews This link opens in a new window Provides the worldwide scholarly community with a useful and intelligent synthesis of the primary research literature for a broad spectrum of scholarly disciplines. Each year, Annual Reviews critically reviews the most significant primary research literature to guide you to the principal contributions of the field and help you keep up to date in your area of research.
- Biological Science Collection This link opens in a new window Provides comprehensive coverage of biological science fields including animal behavior, aquatic life and fisheries, chemoreception, biochemistry, ecology, plant science, toxicology, virology, microbiology, immunology genetics, health and safety science, oncogenes, entomology, and endocrinology neuroscience.
- BIOSIS Citation Index This link opens in a new window Contains citations to items in journals, books, conference proceedings, and technical reports, in all areas of the life sciences and biology. Many citations include abstracts.
- DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new window Database of open access journals covering all scientific and scholarly subjects. Use to identify open access journal titles. Journals can be browsed by title or by broad subject area. Articles are searchable by article author or title, ISSN, journal title, abstract, or key words. Full-text is not searchable but is fully accessible.
- DSM Library This link opens in a new window Includes access to the DSM-5, the DSM-5 Handbook of Differential Diagnosis, DSM-5 Clinical Cases, DSM-5 Handbook on the Cultural Formulation Interview, and Guía De Consulta De Los Criterios Diagnósticos Del DSM-5.
- ERIC This link opens in a new window Covers education-related literature. Provides access to ERIC documents and journal articles.
- Google Scholar This link opens in a new window Enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
- MIT CogNet This link opens in a new window Online location for the brain and cognitive science community’s scientific research and interchange. An essential resource for those interested in cutting-edge primary research across the range of fields concerned with understanding the nature of the human mind.
- ProQuest Dissertations and Theses A&I This link opens in a new window Indexes the work of authors from graduate schools and universities in North America and from around the globe. Starting with the 1980s records include abstracts of the works. Our subscription gives UCSB users access to UC dissertations in full text 1997 forward.
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window Allows searching of articles from electronic journals, books, and reference works published by Elsevier and its subsidiaries.
- Social Sciences Databases (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window Allows users to simultaneously perform a search in any or all of the social sciences databases from ProQuest.
- Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window A primary resource for accessing the latest research sponsored in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. Draws information from an international selection of thousands of journals and other sources.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new window Covers thousands of research journals, and extensive collections of conference proceedings and books across hundreds of disciplines.
- APA's Ongoing Replication ReportsReplication studies in psychology based on a shared and vetted protocol.