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Psychology: Online Resources

A guide to resources for research in psychology.

Open Access Journals

Why Open Access (OA)? Open Access literature is free and available to anyone. Researchers anywhere in the world ccan read the scholarly output that has been made available in an open-access journal. This means that a local social worker or therapist who does not have access to all the journals subscribed to by Felician University can read the research findings disseminated in an OA journal.

How OA journals support themselves: Rather than charging readers a subscription fee, OA journals often use the "author-pays" model in which they charge authors and article processing charge (APC). 

OA Journals: This selective list of high-quality journals; the journals listed below are peer-reviewed and online.

  • Behavioral Sciences (MDPI): publishes original articles, critical reviews, research notes and short communications in  the area of psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, behavioral biology and behavioral genetics. 
  • BMC Psychology covers all aspects of psychology, human behavior and the mind, including developmental, cliniical, cognitive, experimental, health and social psychology, as well as personality and individual differences. 
  • Collabra Psychology: the official journal of the Society of the Improvement of Psychological Science published by the University of California Press. Includes seven sections representing the broad field of psychology including: Cognitive, Social, Personality, Clinical, and Developmental Psychology and Organizational Behavior and Methodology and Research  Practice.
  • Frontiers in Psychology: This multidisciplinary open-access journal "publishes the best research across the entire field of psychology." Includes 28 subsections including Cognitive Science, Environmental Psychology, Perception Science, and Quantitative Science and Measurement.
  • Open Mind: Discoveries in Cognitive Science: covers the broad array of content areas within cognitive science, using approaches from cognitive psychology, computer science and mathematical psychology, cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, comparative psychology and behavioral anthropology, decision sciences, and theoretical and experimental linguistics. 
  • SAGE Open: publishes original research and review articles in all areas of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities. 

In addition to these fully open access journals, most traditional subscription-based journals also allow authors to pay an additional fee to make their articles open access. These are known as hybrid journals.

CRAAP Method for Evaluating Websites

Critical Thinking and Evaluating Sources – Evidence-Based Massage Therapy

Currency

  • How recent is the information?
  • How recently has the website been updated?
  • Is it current enough for your topic?

Reliability

  • What kind of information is included in the resource?
  • Is content of the resource primarily opinion?  Is is balanced?
  • Does the creator provide references or sources for data or quotations?

Authority

  • Who is the creator or author?
  • What are the credentials? Can you find any information about the author's background?
  • Who is the published or sponsor?
  • Are they reputable?
  • What is the publisher's interest (if any) in this information?
  • Are there advertisements on the website? If so, are they cleared marked?

Purpose/Point of View

  • Is this fact or opinion? Does the author list sources or cite references?
  • Is it biased? Does the author seem to be trying to push an agenda or particular side?
  • Is the creator/author trying to sell you something? If so, is it clearly stated?

Preprints

Preprint and Postprint Servers

Preprint servers allow researchers to make their findings available to the public prior to publication in a peer-reviewed journal. This allows researchers to receive feedback from their research community prior to publication, to "test the waters," and to "stake their claim" on a topic prior to publication. Some journals, however, will not accept articles that have appeared on a preprint server.

Listed below are notable preprint servers for psychology research but there are many other preprint servers in other fields, including medicine and biological sciences.

  • PsyArXiv: Maintained by the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Sciences (SIPS) and the Center for Open Science. Established in 2016.

  • SocArXiv; Papers: open-access platform for social scientists to upload working papers, preprints, and published papers, with the option to link data and code. Established in 2016.

Postprint Servers: Another way to make research available to the public is to post previously published works in an online postprint repository.