1. Writing for Psychology II: Finding the best references
Dr. Emma E. Buchtel,

2. What I hope you’ll learn:
Answers to these questions:
How can I know if the article I’ve found is “good?”
This workshop will focus on:
If I’m just starting a new research topic, how do I find out which articles to read?
How can I find out “metrics” that show if an article is “high-quality” and “high-impact?”
In other words-- how do I decide which are the most important articles for my topic?
Other recommended places to learn more:
Dunn, D. S. (2011). A short guide to writing about psychology (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Longman.
Library workshops:

3. What is a high-quality reference?
The quality of a reference depends on:
Content: Recently published, empirical research reports that are very relevant to your research question are your first choice.
Professional and high-impact (= highly influential): References that are cited by many other psychology articles, and published in peer-reviewed, high-impact journals (journals whose articles often get cited) are your first choice.
Today we’ll focus on the second topic: identifying professional, high-impact articles in Psychology.

4. Basically, three clues to professional importance:
Use other articles’ reference lists
See which articles are referenced most often in articles on your topic
Search for articles on PsycINFO
And look at the information about how many times an article has been cited
Search for articles from high-impact journals
Find out a journal’s impact factor using JCR (Journal Citation Reports)

5. Using other articles’ reference lists
(Finding the “most important theories” or “most important papers” in a field)

6. Using clues from other articles’ reference lists: Steps
Search on PsycINFO for your topic
PLEASE DON’T USE GOOGLE SCHOLAR if you want to read only psychology articles
Download 5 or so good-looking articles
From good journals (peer-reviewed; high impact factor)
Recently published (within years to start)
Cited (if possible)
If it is a totally new topic to you, look for review articles (e.g. published in the Annual Review of Psychology, the Personality and Social Psychology Review, maybe a book chapter in an edited book, etc.)
Skim-Read the Introduction sections
Find out if there are any patterns. Do several of the articles cite the same reference(s)?
Search again on PsycINFO for the articles that were frequently cited
Download and read those articles / chapters
AND also check which other articles have cited that article/chapter, to find more recent articles on the same topic
Do this a couple times and you will get a good “feel” for what articles are most important for your area of research

7. Using PsycINFO to find an article that has been cited often
(Finding the citation count for an article)

8. Using PsycINFO to see impact of ARTICLE
Find the article in PsycInfo and look at how often it’s been cited.
Library website  E-Tools E-Resources  search for PsycINFO
Enter search terms to find your article
Look at “Times Cited in this Database”

9. Try it yourself:
Find an article in PsycINFO and look at how often it’s been cited.
Library website  E-Tools E-Resources  search for PsycINFO
Enter search terms to find your article
Let’s try… “Culture” & “Corruption”
Look at “Times Cited in this Database”
Can you find any articles that have been cited?

10. Times cited- how to interpret?
If it’s a very recent article (last 2 years) it’s very rare to be cited even 1 time.
So if it’s a recent article that has already been cited, it’s probably a good article!
For different areas of psychology, citations might happen more slowly or more quickly
Slow: Developmental psychology, social psychology
Fast: Neuroscience, health
For a class on a specific kind of psychology, you can ask your teacher about what standard to use for articles in his/her psychology area

11. Using JCR to find an journal that publishes articles that have been cited often
(Finding the Impact factor of a journal)

12. Use journal’s impact to decide which articles are more important / reliable
Other than # of times the article is cited--
Look at the JOURNAL. Articles published in better journals are more likely to be good research.
2. Look up the article’s JOURNAL in JCR (Social sciences) and look at its impact factor
Library website  E-Tools E-Resources  search for JCR
...let’s do it together: Let’s look for the Journal of Personality
(Note: Some of the following slides are taken/edited from a Library workshop powerpoint presentation, available at

13. Finding a Journal in JCR
Enter your requested journal in the search box, e.g. journal of personality or just a keyword, like personality
Select the most recent JCR year; default of other selections are fine 13

14. Metrics shown

15. Impact factor- how to interpret?
Impact factor is a way of knowing how many times articles were cited from that journal.
The larger it is, the better
To better interpret, compare your journal to other journals in the same area.
Journals from “fast citation” psychology areas (e.g. Neuroscience) will have higher impact factors than journals from “slow citation” psychology areas (e.g. Developmental Psychology).
In Social / Personality psychology, a journal with an impact factor over 1.0 is OK. Over 3.0 is amazing.

16. Journal impact factor is high:

17. Also: look at Rank & Quartile within its category.
A Q1 journal is excellent. If the article you’ve found was published in a Q1 journal, it is likely to be very high quality.

18. How about... Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
What is its 2015 impact factor?
What is its Rank and Quartile—
within Psychology, Clinical?
within Psychology, Social?

19. How to see ranking of all journals of a certain subject?
Click on “Select Categories”
Select category(ies) of journals you want to see
Click on “Submit” at the bottom of the page
The list of journals will change, ranked by impact factor.

20. Summary: I have an article. How do I find out its impact?
If you already have an article in-hand, check how often it’s been cited, and whether or not it’s in a “good” journal (high impact factor).
Use PsycINFO to check the impact of the article
Use JCR to check the impact of the journal
Try the exercises on Moodle.
Remember: Library website  E-Tools  E-Resources  search for PsycINFO or JCR

21. Summary
Do you now have a better idea of how to answer these questions?
How do I find the best references for my topic?
How can I know if the article I’ve found is “good?”
We focused on how to:
Find out if an article is “high-quality” and “high-impact:”
Use patterns of citations in many articles to find out what theories / articles are being most discussed
Search PsycINFO and JCR to check how many times the article has been cited, and the impact factor of the journal