Psychiatry: Databases
Introduction
To find journal articles on a subject you will need to use one of the databases listed on this page. Tertiary study requires a sophisticated approach to finding information, and Google and Wikipedia just won't do!!!
Although Google Scholar can be useful, it will not allow the highly sophisticated searching for journal articles which is possible with many academic databases. You also need to be aware that if two people do identical searches using Google, or Google Scholar they may get quite different results.This is where academic databases are indispensable, as identical searches produce identical results.
There is an interesting TED Talk "Beware online filter bubbles" which explains that as web companies, including Google and Google Scholar, strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence.. we can become trapped in a "filter bubble" and not be exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our world view.
There will be times when you'd like to find government documents, or other information on the web. This is when Google is your best option, but make sure you use it effectively!! Click on the Grey Literature tab at the top of the page for some hints on how to get the most out of Google searching.
The most important databases for psychiatry are:-
Embase indexes European and British material not included in PubMed, with good coverage of psychiatric material
PubMed also has good coverage of psychiatric journals, but has a North American emphasis
PsycINFO
The PsycINFO , database, produced by the American Psychological Association (APA), is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. It contains over 3 million records and summaries dating as far back as the 1600s. Journal coverage, which spans from the 1800s to the present, includes international material selected from around 2,500 periodicals in dozens of languages.
Below is a more extensive list of databases which may be useful for psychiatry, as well as links to help with how to use them.
Newspaper collections and databases are listed on a separate page.
Database Lists
Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre
The Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre combines Australia and New Zealand specific magazines, newspapers & newswires, reference books, and company information. This database provides local perspectives on current events, business, sports, and many other subjects. Australia/NZ Reference Centre also contains international magazines, reference books, newspapers & newswires.
Australian Bureau of Statistics Website. Statistics Section
Everything on the ABS web site is now accessible free of charge. There's a useful "How do I?" option at the right hand side of the home page.
Informit
Informit offers a wide range of databases and full content publications that deliver Australasian scholarly material published in journals, monographs, conference proceedings and other research material. Informit Plus Text databases include links to thousands of articles from hundreds of leading Australasian journals. Subject areas covered include arts, education, health, law, business, science, and humanities and social sciences.
The Informit selection of Health databases is an excellent source of Australian material - much of which is not indexed elsewhere.
Informit has useful "how to" guides on searching, creating email alerts, and exporting citations.
Libraries Australia
Libraries Australia is a web-based service for Australian libraries and their users. It is a National Bibliographic Database of material held in libraries throughout the country, and enables you to search for an item and find out which library in Australia holds it. Use the Help option on the toolbar to find hints on effective searching.
To search for journals, use the Journals limit. For short titles such as Nature, use Advanced Search and change all of these to exact match or starts with. With the Advanced Search option you can restrict your search to books or journals held by libraries in South Australia.
Academic OneFile
Contains peer-reviewed, full-text articles in HTML and PDF format from more than 8000 journals with extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature, and other subjects; intended primarily for academic researchers.
Academic Search Complete
Academic Search Complete is a multi-disciplinary database, which provides full text for nearly 4,500 journals, including full text for more than 3,600 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for 1,000 titles. This database is updated on a daily basis.
Biosis Citation Index
The most comprehensive reference database for life science research. It includes over 23 million bibliographic records dating back to 1926, plus cited references to primary journal literature on vital biological research, medical research findings, and discoveries of new organisms. It also covers original research reports and reviews in traditional biological and biomedical areas.
Business Source Complete
Business Source Complete provides full text for thousands of scholarly business journals, including full text for more than 1,000 peer-reviewed business publications. Coverage includes virtually all subject areas related to business.
Campbell Collaboration
The Campbell Collaboration collaborates closely with its sibling organization, the Cochrane Collaboration, which prepares and maintains systematic reviews of the effects of interventions in health care. The Campbell Library of Systematic Reviews provides free online access to systematic reviews in the areas of education, criminal justice and social welfare.
CINAHL with full text
Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL), is equivalent to the printed Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature. It indexes English language nursing journals, as well as publications of the American Nurses' Association and the National League for Nursing. The primary journals from the following allied health disciplines are also included. Allied Health Disciplines, Cardiopulmonary Technology, Dental Hygiene, Emergency Services, Medical/Laboratory Technology, Medical Assistant, Medical Records, Nutrition and Dietetics ,Occupational Therapy, Optometry, Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation, Physicians' Assistant, Podiatry, Radiologic Technology, Respiratory Technology, Social Service in Health Care, Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, Surgical Technology.
Publications are selectively indexed for the following fields:
Behavioral Science, Biomedicine, Consumer Health, Health Sciences Librarianship, Health Services Administration, Law & Legal Issues in Health Care.
Basic help for searching CINAHL is here
Cochrane Library
Cochrane Library provides rapid access to high quality information about the effects of health care. Consists chiefly of 7 databases: Cochrane database of systematic reviews; Database of abstracts of reviews of effectiveness (DARE); Cochrane central register of controlled trials (CENTRAL); Cochrane database of methodology reviews; Cochrane methodology register; Health technology assessment database (HTA); and NHS Economic evaluation database (NHS EED).
Counseling and Psychotherapy Transcripts, Client Narratives, and Reference Works
A searchable collection containing real transcripts of therapy and counseling sessions and first-person narratives dealing with mental illness and its treatment, as well as reference works. New material is added on a regular basis.
Counseling and Therapy in Video
Provides a large online collection of video, available for the study of social work, psychotherapy, psychology, and psychiatric counseling. Counseling sessions and demonstrations include filmed footage of actual therapy sessions, re-enacted therapy sessions, and scripted sessions designed by counseling professionals to illustrate common issues and scenarios that arise during courses of therapy.
Current Contents Connect
Current Contents Connect is a weekly table-of-contents database which presents the contents pages of current issues of the world's scholarly and technical journals, books, and proceedings literature. It is the best database for very recent articles, and has a useful email alert function.
Help is available from Current Contents Connect Quick Reference Card , and Current Contents Connect Tutorial
Embase
Indexes an additional 2,000 + biomedical titles not currently covered by Medline. Although it contains Medline data, it is not an alternative to PubMed, which includes recent material not yet indexed for Medline, and not available through Embase.
Embase help is here.
Emerald Fulltext
Emerald publishes a wide range of management and library & information services journals, as well as a strong specialist range of engineering, applied science and technology journals. Emerald Fulltext is a collection of over 40,000 articles from over 100 of the most prestigious management journals, complete with full text archives back to 1994 and abstracts back to 1989. This includes all major management disciplines, from marketing, human resources management, and library and information management, to quality management, and operations management.
ERIC
The 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). In addition, ERIC provides coverage of conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books and monographs.
Health Business Elite
This database provides full text coverage for nearly 450 well-known administrative journals. Health Business FullTEXT Elite provides comprehensive journal content detailing all aspects of health care administration and other non-clinical aspects of health care institution management.
Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition
This database provides over 550 scholarly full text journals focusing on many medical disciplines. It also features abstracts and indexing for 800 journals.
Henry Stewart Talks Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection
Henry Stewart Talks consist of audio-visual presentations ("online seminars by leading world experts") lasting approximately 40-50 minutes . The speakers cover a range of topics in biomedicine and life sciences.
Joanna Briggs Institute EBP Database
Resources include a range of publication types: Evidence Based Recommended Practices, Evidence Summaries, Best Practice Information Sheets, Systematic Reviews, Consumer Information Sheets, Systematic Review Protocols, and Technical Reports.
Medline
see
PubMed
Mental Measurements Yearbook
Mental Measurements Yearbook, from the Buros Institute, contains the most recent descriptive information and critical reviews of new and revised tests from the Buros Institute's Yearbooks. The database covers more than 4,000 commercially-available tests in categories such as personality, developmental, behavioral assessment, neuropsychological, achievement, intelligence and aptitude, educational, speech & hearing, and sensory motor.
Each entry includes test name and classification; author(s); publisher, publication date; price; time requirements; score descriptions; levels; and intended populations.
Ovid Medline uses the same data as PubMed, but has a different search engine, and there are times when you may find some of its features useful.
Ovid Medline help is here
PEP: Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing
From PEP-WEB, PEP describes itself as "A fully searchable digital archive of classic psychoanalytic texts." It contains the full text of a wide range of psychoanalytic journals, as well as a number of psychoanalytic books, and the full text and editorial notes of the 24 volumes of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.
Periodicals Archive Online
Periodicals Archive Online is an online periodical archive that makes the backfiles of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences available electronically, providing access to the full text of a growing number of digitized periodicals that have been indexed in its sister database, Periodicals Index Online. PAO includes full text from periodicals in English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, and other Western languages, including some published as far back as 1802.
PhilPapers: Online Research in Philosophy
Philpapers monitors all sources of research content in philosophy, including journals, books, open access archives, and personal pages maintained by academics. It also hosts the largest open access archive in philosophy.
PILOTS: Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress
Produced by the National Center for PTSD, the PILOTS database is an electronic index to the worldwide literature on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health consequences of exposure to traumatic events.
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses: Global
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses: Global is the world's most comprehensive collection of full-text dissertations and theses. It includes millions of searchable citations to dissertations and theses from 1861 to the present day, with over a million full-text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format.
PsycARTICLES
PsycARTICLES™ is a database of full-text articles from journals published by the American Psychological Association, the APA Educational Publishing Foundation, the Canadian Psychological Association, and Hogrefe Publishing Group. Most APA journals now go back to Volume 1, Issue 1; the earliest journal is Psychological Review, which was started in 1894.
PsycBITE
PsycBITE is a database that catalogues studies of cognitive, behavioural and other treatments for psychological problems and issues occurring as a consequence of acquired brain impairment (ABI). The types of studies contained on this database are Systematic Reviews, Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT), Non-Randomised Controlled Trials (non-RCT), Case Series (CS), and Single-Case Experimental Designs (SCED).
PsycBOOKS
PsycBOOKS is a full-text database that provides electronic access to thousands of scholarly and professional titles published by APA, including recent titles in psychological and behavioral science, plus a substantial backfile of classic and historic works.
PsycCRITIQUES
PsycCRITIQUES is a full-text database with tens of thousands of book and film reviews from 1956 to the present.
PsycEXTRA
PsycEXTRA is a database which combines bibliographic records with full-text professional and lay-audience literature such as legal testimony and amicus briefs, reports, conference materials, popular magazines, factsheets, grants, and web materials. It is a source for information, research and practice in the behavioural and social sciences and an archive of grey literature documenting psychology's development.
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection
A database of more than 570 journals, with more than 540 in full text. Topics include psychiatry, psychology, emotions, and mental processes.
PsycINFO
PsycINFO is an abstract database of psychological literature from the 1800s to the present. PsycINFO covers not only journals (almost all of which are peer reviewed), but also books, and book chapters. PsycINFO indexes all of the material in the following APA products:-
PsycARTICLES, PsycBOOKS, PsycCRITIQES, PsycTESTS, and PsycTHERAPY.
So you don’t need to search individual databases separately.
Basic help for searching PsycINFO is here
PsycTESTS
PsycTESTS is a research database that provides access to psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys, and other assessments as well as descriptive information about the tests and their development and administration.
Videos on using PsycTESTS on the Ovid platform are here
PubMed (University of Adelaide Customised Version)
Records in the version of PubMed customised for the University of Adelaide have a 'University of Adelaide Online' button - which will allow access to the many thousands of online journal articles available to Adelaide users. You will need to use the link above to access this version.
Notes and tutorials on how to use PubMed can be found here
PubMed Central (PMC)
PubMed Central® (PMC) was launched in 2000 as a free archive for full-text biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). PMC also includes final, peer-reviewed author manuscripts by scientists and others who receive research funding from NIH and other funding agencies.
Help with searching PMC is here
Science Citation Index
see
Web of Science
Scopus
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database. It has the broadest coverage available of scientific, technical, medical and social sciences literature, including 15,000 peer-reviewed journals from more than 4,000 international publishers.
Scopus help is here
Social Services Abstracts
Social Services Abstracts provides bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development. Includes abstracts of journal articles and dissertations, and citations to book reviews.
Sociological Abstracts
The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,800 serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. Records added after 1974 contain in-depth and nonevaluative abstracts of journal articles.
Web of Science
Web of Science (previously Web of Knowledge) allows you to cross-search multiple resources simultaneously. Its resources include CAB Abstracts, Biosis Previews, Current Contents Connect, Inspec, Zoological Record, and Web of Science Core Collection, as well as a version of Medline.
Web of Science Core Collection
Web of Science Core Collection is particularly useful for finding articles which have cited a given article, and which may therefore be on a similar topic.
It includes:-
Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED)
Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)
Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI)
Help for searching Web of Science is at Web of Science Tutorial, and Web of Science Quick Reference Card
Zoological Record
Citations to the world wide literature on zoology. The broad scope of coverage ranges from biodiversity and the environment to taxonomy and veterinary sciences