APA PsycExtra® Coverage Practices
APA PsycExtra® covers a wide variety of the literature that is so difficult to find it's often called "gray literature" or "fugitive literature."
This literature contains the important professional material, such as research reports, conference presentations and abstracts, policy statements, standards, and so on, that is not indexed in standard bibliographic databases like APA PsycInfo®. All of the content in APA PsycExtra is relevant to psychology, behavioral science, or health.
Topics Covered
To get a sense of the breadth of the topics covered in APA PsycExtra, see the Classification Categories and Codes page.
APA PsycExtra is a unique database in two ways:
- It contains material that is scattered in hundreds of places and is consequently very difficult to find.
- It contains both the quality bibliographic information users are accustomed to with APA PsycInfo plus full text for a high percentage of the documents covered.
The exception is popular magazines. Full text is not included for these materials because most libraries already get the full text from other sources. The bibliographic information is included so that users can get psychology-related indexing to help them find relevant material that they can then link to.
Coverage Criteria
Material is accepted only from credible sources. In determining whether to accept content from a society or organization, APA managers review the following information:
- History of the organization
- Governing body
- Conventions and meetings
- Publications program
Documents must be fact-based and be presented in a professional form. Knowledgeable APA managers review all content for relevance, significance, and quality.
Research reports must be issued by accredited schools or major labs to be accepted.
APA PsycExtra is a finding and linking tool for gray literature in the behavioral and social sciences. Inclusion of any content does not constitute endorsement or approval by the American Psychological Association.
