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If you are a psychology student or taking any sort of social science class, then you will need to be able to read and understand the articles found in scientific research journals. Such articles describe different psychology studies on a wide range of subjects. As you are writing papers or conducting your own research, these journals can provide helpful background information and other sources to investigate.
Finding full-text psychology journals online can be challenging. Imagine you think you have found the perfect journal article by its fitting title. You click on it and read the abstract, and now you are certain that you must have this article in your collection of sources, only to find out the full text is hidden behind a paywall. You are shocked to find out you have to pay $29.95 to access the article!
Fortunately, there are a number of psychology, social science, and medical journals that offer free full-text articles, often labeled "open-access" journals. Full-text journals may be especially useful for people with limited access to academic libraries or online databases and for students living in rural areas or studying via distance education.
This article will review a selection of journals, databases, archives, and search engines that offer access to full-text articles, each with its own benefits and limitations.
You might consider starting your search with journals that offer full-text, electronic versions of their content. Whether these journals offer the material you need for your research depends on the topic you are researching and the specific guidelines of your assignment.
Recently published articles may not be immediately available. Many journals that offer full-text versions of their content do so after a waiting period that may last anywhere from one month to one year after publication.
These journals represent just some of the resources that are available online. If you are still looking for additional research, pay a visit to your university library. In many cases, your school's library may have access to a number of different research databases where you can find free full-text journal articles for your research.
In addition to looking at specific journals that provide access to full-text articles free of charge, it can be helpful to know how to find them in a more general sense. You can do a broader search for articles using the following archives, databases, and search engines:
CogPrints is a repository that holds self-archived articles for greater public access. Articles are categorized by topic, including many in psychology. Find articles on behavioral analysis, clinical psychology, psychobiology, social psychology, and more.
Taylor & Francis provides hundreds of open-access journals to search, with full-text articles, including Health Psychology & Behavioral Medicine, Psychology Research and Behavior Management, and Nature and Science of Sleep.
You can search for any topic using Google Scholar, and it will pull a list of journal articles, books, and other sources for you to consider. The more specific your search terms, the better. If you come across articles that only have abstracts or the first page, don't give up. Some authors may post the full content on their personal websites as HTML links or downloadable PDFs, or you may find the article available in other formats on other academic sites or journal databases. Do a little more digging (or googling).
The JAMA network has 13 journals, of which two are fully open access (JAMA Network Open and JAMA Health Forum). However, JAMA allows authors from within any of the other specialty network journals to publish their articles in an open-access format giving the public immediate access to many of their current publications. Otherwise, there is a 6 to 12-month wait to view the full text which becomes available in PubMed Central.
PLOS One: The Public Library of Science provides open access to 12 journals that are peer-reviewed covering research in medicine and other scientific disciplines including psychology. PLOS Mental Health is a specific section covering mental health research.
PubMed Central is a free digital archive of open-access, full-text scholarly articles published in biomedical and life science journals. This database is maintained by the United States National Library of Medicine. You can search for articles by topic, author, and journal-title. Be sure you don't confuse this with PubMed where you will only find abstracts.
Sage Journals is a collection of open-access full-text journals categorized by topic, having 785 journals categorized as "social sciences and humanities." Registration is free. This includes a variety of journals like American Behavioral Scientist, Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Evolutionary Psychology, and Journal of Attention Disorders.
SpringerLink offers open access to journal articles and other resources. While not all of the content on the site is available in full-text, or free, many journals provide "gold" open access which allows immediate access to their published articles. To narrow down the search to full-text, open-access journals, you have to unselect the box that says "include preview-only content." You can find journals like Crime Science, Journal of Eating Disorders, and BioPsychoSocial Medicine.
The Cochrane Library offers open-access, full-text versions of systematic reviews of existing research. You can browse by topic, look through special collections, or use the search tool to find articles relevant to your research.
In addition to finding sources in journals that publish full-print versions online, you can also look through databases and sites that may contain full-text psychology journal articles. If you find an abstract for an article that seems like it might be a good source, a simple online search can often turn up a full version of the article.
Knowing where to locate journal articles can be helpful, but having the skills to search for them on your own can be invaluable. Each site is a little different and takes some getting used to. If you are still struggling to locate sources online, consider visiting your school's library for more information, tips, and resources. You might also consider signing up for workshops or courses offered by your school that help teach students how to search for academic resources.
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
By Kendra Cherry, MSEd
Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."
