Recommended Databases
- PsycINFO This link opens in a new windowContains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, and technical reports in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business, and law.
- PsycArticles This link opens in a new windowProvides full text access to articles from journals published by APA and allied organizations. Covers general psychology and specialized basic, applied, clinical, and theoretical research in psychology.
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Reference Desks
Undergraduate (UGL): 313-577-8852
Purdy/Kresge: 313-577-6423
Arthur Neef Law: 313-577-6180
Shiffman Medical: 313-577-1094
APA Style Resources
Use these tools if you need help formatting your paper or citing sources in APA style.
Scholarly Versus Popular Articles
What is Peer Review?
Other Useful Databases
- Scopus This link opens in a new window"Scopus is the world's largest abstracts database of 13,450 titles from more than 4,000 international publishers with access to over 25 million abstracts (going back to 1966)." Full-text is included for some citations.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowThis database is an online version of the ISI indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index from 1975-. A search can be limited to one index (i.e. Science Citation Index OR Social Science Citation Index).
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new windowA Web database for scientific research that contains abstracts and the full text of more than 1000 Elsevier Science journals in the life, physical, medical, technical, and social sciences.
- CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new windowCINAHL Complete is a comprehensive source of full text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 750 journals indexed in CINAHL. This authoritative file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the CINAHL index with no embargo. CINAHL Complete is the definitive research tool for all areas of nursing and allied health literature.
- PubMed@Wayne This link opens in a new windowPubMed is a project developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)--Overview. NLM's search service to access the 9 million citations in MEDLINE and Pre-MEDLINE (with links to participating on-line journals), and other related databases --Home page.
- Business Source Complete This link opens in a new windowWith more than 1,200 journals, Business Source Complete is THE database for journal articles from all disciplines of business. Also includes additional full text content including financial data, books, conference proceedings, case studies, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses and more.
- ERIC - ProQuest This link opens in a new windowThe ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to provide extensive access to educational-related literature. The ERIC database corresponds to two printed journals: Resources in Education (RIE) and Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE). Both journals provide access to some 14,000 documents and over 20,000 journal articles per year.
- ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global Closed Collection - full text This link opens in a new windowPQDT offers access to 3 million citations to dissertations and theses from around the world from 1861 to the present day together with over a million full text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works. Over 80,000 new dissertations and theses are added to the database each year.
Online Psychology Journals
- Citation Linker [Library Site Link]If you are looking for an article, and you know some citation information, just enter that information into Citation Linker to see if WSU has the article.
- Online Psychology JournalsPsychology Journals available online at WSU.
Connecting to Full Text Using Article Linker
Journals and Impact Factors
What is an Impact Factor?
An impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a particular year or period. The impact factor is a ratio between citations and recent citable items published. Thus, the impact factor of a journal is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to the source items published in that journal during the previous two years.
The impact factor is useful in clarifying the significance of absolute (or total) citation frequencies. It eliminates some of the bias of such counts which favor large journals over small ones, or frequently issued journals over less frequently issued ones, and of older journals over newer ones.
Perhaps the most important and recent use of impact is in the process of academic evaluation. The impact factor can be used to provide a gross approximation of the prestige of journals in which individuals have been published. This is best done in conjunction with other considerations such as peer review, productivity, and subject specialty citation rates.
How to Find an Impact Factor?
Impact Factors may be found using Journal Citation Reports.
- Journal citation reports This link opens in a new windowThe Journal citation reports is an essential, comprehensive, and unique resource for journal evaluation, using citation data drawn from over 8,400 scholarly and technical journals worldwide. The Science edition contains data from roughly 5,000 journals in the areas of science and technology. To access Journal Citation Reports: from main Search Page, Select a Database tab then click on the Journal Citation Reports.
Am I an Empirical Research Article?
- How to Identify an Empirical Research Article [PowerPoint]This Powerpoint illustrates the 5 main sections of an empirical research article: Introduction & LIterature Review, Method, Results, Conclusion and References, along with descriptions of the content of the sections and defines empirical research.