Use databases to help you find literature for your assignments and research projects.
A database is a searchable collection of information sources and may contain journal articles, reports, books, newspaper articles, and other materials.
Some contain full-text, others contain abstracts and references. Some focus on one subject area, others are multidisciplinary.
Most have good search facilities to enable flexible, structured, and focused searching. Results can be exported to RefWorks, Excel or other reference management software.
Find using ARU database A-Z - look for specific databases or browse by subject.
See links on this page for subject specific recommendations.
Contact the library with general questions. You'll be redirected quickly to the Subject Librarian team if you need help using resources in this guide, finding information sources or referencing,
Need more in-depth help? Book an appointment with your Subject Librarian, Andrea Packwood.
This page contains links to databases useful for all aspects of psychology. We pay for most databases so access is through Library login.
Getting into the databases:
Want to read an article in full? Databases are a finding tool to show what articles and other sources exist on a topic. They may not always contain full articles/reports. Use links in the database results (for example, the Full-text options at ARU button in EBSCOhost) to check for full-text we might have access to elsewhere - or use Google Scholar to find publicly accessible articles. For more information, see tips in the Accessing full articles section.
Want to save your results? You can save outside the database or within it. You can export results from all our databases to RefWorks, ARU's subscribed reference management tool. You can also create a personal account in each database (after you have used Library Login) to save searches and create alerts.
US administration impact on research and data availability
Actions by the US government since 20 January 2025 have impacted and are continuing to impact research and potential access to data. Please see the page on our Medicine Science Guide for more information.
Psychology EBSCOhost interface is new as of 5 August - this affects the way you search and how you download references. Accessibility is improved and there are several new features with a new layout. More detail on front page of this guide.
|
PsycInfo: Very large index covering all aspects of psychology. Produced by the American Psychological Association (APA). |
 |
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection: Index covering large range of psychology topics. Includes a lot of full-text. |
|
| PsycArticles: Full content of APA Journals and some affiliated publishers. |  |
PubPsych: freely available psychology content from several European database sources. Not full-text but links out to some freely available sources. |  |
Medical and allied health|
MEDLINE: Journal articles in all aspects of medicine, biomedical sciences and health. Material included is tagged with MeSH and quality checked. |
 |
PubMed: publicly available medical database. Contains all of Medline plus material from daily updates awaiting processing for inclusion in Medline. |
 |
| Global Index Medicus: worldwide access to biomedical and public health literature produced by and within low-middle income countries. Material collated by WHO. |  |
Embase: Well-respected biomedical and pharmacological database. Stronger in pharmacology than PubMed. |  |
| Cochrane Library: High quality systematic reviews (use Cochrane Reviews tab on Cochrane Library page to access) |  |
CINAHL Ultimate: Journal articles in patient care, nursing and allied health. |  |
Specific areas of Psychology| PTSDPubs: provides citations and abstracts to worldwide literature on PTSD and other psychological effects of trauma. |  |
World Database of Happiness: |  |
|
ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection: journal articles that may cover the social issues of interest to criminal and forensic psychologists.
|
|
Westlaw UK: One of the main databases for UK cases, legislation, journals, current awareness and more. |  |
|
EBSCO Education Research Complete. Broad ranging database covering all levels and aspects of educatation, with full-text articles for many articles. British Education Index: UK education journal articles, strong in Special Educational Needs (SEN). ERIC: Large index with abstracts of journal articles in education. US bias. Education Abstracts: Index and abstract. Strong in adult and multicultural education. Professional Development Collection: Index and full-text of around 500 education journals. |
The image above goes to Library Record for All EBSCO databases. From the link under Find Online you can choose one or more of the education databases to search. |
SportDiscus: leading sport and exercise database, covers all aspects of sport psychology. Use in conjunction with PsycInfo for a comprehensive search. |  |
Multidisciplinary| SCOPUS: World’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. |  |
Web of Science: Large abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Similar to SCOPUS. |  |
* Banner image credit: The healing touch, emotional cancer journey, artwork. Credit: Michele Angelo Petrone. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
