PsycINFO®

PsycINFO® is an expansive abstracting and indexing database with more than 3 million records devoted to peer-reviewed literature in the behavioral sciences and mental health, making it an ideal discovery and linking tool for scholarly research in a host of disciplines.

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Benefits

What you can expect from PsycINFO

Comprehensive Coverage
  • More than 3.7 million records, covering psychology back to its underpinnings in the 17th Century
  • Records for peer-reviewed journals, books, and dissertations
  • Professional coverage beyond psychology to include related disciplines such as medicine, law, social work, neuroscience, business, nursing, forensics, engineering, and more
High-quality Records
  • Meticulously indexed by subject experts at APA
  • Extensive pre-release quality assurance and post-release record monitoring ensures highly relevant and accurate results
  • Immediate coverage of correction and retraction notices indexed and cross-referenced to original record
Authoritative Publications
  • Each publication indexed in PsycINFO has been carefully selected by a team of experts for relevance
  • Direction advised by esteemed scholars, scientists, and librarians within APA's membership and the library community

Additional Features

Fully Integrated Linking Tools
  • Direct links to available full-text journal articles, books, and book chapters from provided DOIs
  • Links to other works by the same author
  • Cited By links to track the genealogy of a body of work
Other Important Features
  • Grant and sponsorship data
  • Tests and measures field to help locate specific tests
  • Indexing for "first posting" records yields access to earliest publication of journal articles
  • Publication history to track submission, acceptance, and publication dates
Quick Facts
Database Type Bibliographic
Record Type Abstracts and index records
Record Format HTML
Number of Records More than 3.7 million records
Update Frequency Updated Weekly
Coverage Dates 1597–present, with comprehensive coverage from the 1880s
Journal Coverage
  • Nearly 2,500 journals covered (see Journal Coverage List)
  • Journals covered if psychologically relevant, archival, scholarly, peer-reviewed, and regularly published with titles, abstracts, and keywords in English 99% are peer-reviewed journals
  • Journal records—80% of the database
  • Includes First Posting journal records for early publication articles
Book Coverage
  • Book records—3% of PsycINFO
  • Book chapter records—8% of PsycINFO
  • Chapters come from authored and edited books
  • English-language, published worldwide
  • Selected if scholarly, professional, or research-based; all with psychological relevance
Dissertation/Secondary Publications Coverage
  • Selected from Dissertation Abstracts International (A and B)
  • Dissertation records—12% of PsycINFO
  • Abstracts in dissertation records starting from 1995
  • Selected on basis of classification in DAI in sections with psychological relevance
Global Coverage
  • Publications from more than 50 countries
  • Journals from 29 languages
  • Non-English titles in Roman alphabets included 1978–present
Record Contents Please refer to the Guide to the Fields in Our Database Records
Cited References
Abstracts
  • Virtually 100% of records from 1995 to present have abstracts
  • 99.6% of non-dissertation documents added from 1967 to present contain abstracts
Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms
  • More than 8,400 controlled terms and cross-references
  • Hierarchical, alphabetical, and subject arrangements
  • Major and minor terms assigned
  • Maximum of 15 total terms, 5 major terms per record
  • More information available at Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms®
Classification System
Historic Records

Sources include the following:

  • Psychological Abstracts 1927–1966 (Note: All records published in Psychological Abstracts from 1927 to 2006 are in PsycINFO)
  • Psychological Bulletin 1921–1926
  • American Journal of Psychology 1887–1966
  • Psychological Index (1894–1935), citations to English language journals only
  • Classic Books in Psychology of the 20th Century and the Harvard Book List, 1840–1971
  • Most APA journals back to first issue of publication
  • Classic books in PsycBOOKS

Records for the first five above differ from present records in the following ways:

  • There is no controlled vocabulary (descriptor) field
  • Index may contain descriptor terms, but they are not controlled
  • Other indexing fields, such as Age Groups, Form/Content are not present
  • Classifications are broad only with no subcategories

PsycINFO continues to add historic content as it becomes available.

 

The PsycINFO® database is produced and copyrighted by the American Psychological Association (APA). All rights reserved.

Information current as of January 2015

Access

Individuals

Individual access to PsycINFO can be obtained in the following ways:

Institutions

Institutional access to PsycINFO can be obtained by a site license through the following vendors:

Other Information for institutions:

Site License Fees for Institutions

Sample License Agreements

Training

Learn more about searching PsycINFO. Take a look at our:

A variety of additional training materials and tools are available from our Search Help and Training Center.

Tips & Training
  • Webinar Training – sessions for students and faculty, librarians and individual subscribers
  • Video Tutorials – for APA Databases on APA PsycNET, EBSCOhost, ProQuest and OvidSP
  • Podcasts – audio summaries of research recently added to PsycEXTRA, PsycBOOKS and PsycCRITIQUES (also available from iTunes)
  • Search Guides – platform-specific training materials, including Quick Reference Guides
  • Search Lessons – sample search lessons guide the user through database functionality or sample searches, in PDF and video
  • Topic Guides – tips for searching APA Databases for a particular topic area
Documentation