Full-Text Psychology Journal Articles

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.

Full-Text Psychology Journals

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.

• Addictive Behaviors: An open-source platform that offers peer-reviewed journal articles on addictive behaviors. Full-text articles are in both HTML and PDF format.
• American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse: Focuses on a wide range of topics related to alcohol, substance abuse, and behavioral addictions, and includes topics related to public policy, epidemiology, neurobiology, and treatment aspects of substance abuse.
• Archives of Internal Medicine: Offers online full-text articles to registered users (registration is free), but you have to wait 12 months after publication to view articles for free.1 This journal is published by the American Medical Association (JAMA) and covers clinically relevant research on diverse medical topics.
• Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science (formerly called Journal of Abnormal Psychology): Dating back to 1906, this journal has articles on a variety of topics related to abnormal psychology; and is published by the American Psychological Association. Some of the articles are open-access, free-to-read, or provide a manuscript to view. Others require a subscription or you can pay a fee for individual articles.
• Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis: Hosted by Wiley Online Library, some articles require payment or a subscription to view current research and discussions on applied behavior analysis. However, some articles are marked as open-access or free-to-read.2
• Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied: Offers a selection of full-text journal articles on topics in experimental psychology. Some of the articles are open-access, free-to-read, or provide a manuscript to view. Others require a subscription or you can pay a fee for individual articles.
• Journal of General Psychology: Hosted by Taylor & Francis Online, this journal offers full-text articles on a variety of topics in psychology. Some articles are open-access and can be a great reference for psychology students.
• Learning and Memory: Focuses on the neurobiology of learning and memory and offers free access to full-text articles one year after publication. Some articles are available immediately if the author of the article pays a surcharge, known as “gold” open-access.3
• Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology (formerly called Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology): Hosted on the SpringerLink platform, this journal features full-text articles focused on psychotherapy, prevention, assessment, and treatment of childhood conditions such as developmental disorders, depression, and anxiety. There is a subset of open-access articles in this journal that can be viewed for free.
• The British Journal of Psychiatry: Focuses on clinical aspects of mental health. Full-text articles are available from January 2000 to the present, and all articles are available free of charge one year after publication.4 Under the search bar, there is a box to check “search within full-text.”
• The Journal of Neuroscience: Offers free full-text journal articles in their archive starting in 1981 up to the present, and are made available six months after publication.5

Finding Free Full-Text Articles

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:6

CogPrints

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 Online

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.

Google Scholar

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).

JAMA Open Network

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.

Public Library of Science

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

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

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.

Springer Link

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

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.