Start with your textbook
Faculty members carefully their textbooks, which are often structured to be guides to a discipline. See what your textbook can offer you as a starting point for your research beyond the course readings.
Examine your textbook carefully.
- Browse the table of contents for chapters that might cover your topic.
- Look up your topic in the index at the back of the book.
- The textbook will provide within-text bibliographic citations to research experiments, and those citations are fleshed out in the bibliography at the back of the book.
Tracking down citations
Once you have citations to track down, search for the titles on the Penn Libraries homepage, and select the appropriate item from the resulting screen. Article citations should appear in the Articles+ column of results; book citations should appear in the Catalog column.
Reference works: encyclopedias & handbooks
Use dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks to learn quickly about the state of research on your topic. A good encyclopedia article should describe major themes, current research fronts, and controversial areas; it should also provide a brief bibliography of classic, important, or definitive works on your topic. Handbooks generally offer chapters on specific aspects of a topic: together, the handbook's chapters should provide a broad overview of the state of research; individually, chapters may be narrowly focused.
A Dictionary of Psychology, 4th ed. by Publication Date: 2015"Including more than 11,000 definitions, this authoritative and up-to-date dictionary covers all branches of psychology." -- from resource intro
Concise Medical Dictionary, 10th ed. by Publication Date: 2020"Clear and authoritative definitions for all aspects of medical science." -- from resource intro
The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology, 4th ed.Publication Date: 2010Through its four editions starting in 1984, Corsini has been the basic reference work for psychology. Brief articles with short bibliographies are most easily found by browsing the "Articles by Topics" hierarchy. Corsini includes some brief biographies for major figures in psychological research - a handy way to identify major publications or classic experiments.
- AccessMedicineA collection of medical reference works, including standard textbooks: Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine and Adams and Victor's Principles of Neurology.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed., Text Revision (DSM-5-TR) by Publication Date: 2022Diagnostic classification system that describes the essential features of the full range of mental disorders. The DSM web site includes fulltext for the DSM-5, its training manuals and associated publications, and the earlier editions of the DSM.
Also useful is: American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Psychiatry (7th ed., Amer Psychiatric Publishing, 2019).
Handbook of Psychology, 2nd ed. by Publication Date: 2012"A momentous resource that codifies major advances in psychological research and applications" - that's the title of the PsycCRITIQUES book review! With 12 volumes in print, this is an encyclopedia-sized work with journal-article-length entries. Penn has five contributing authors. Volume 1: History of Psychology and Volume 4: Experimental Psychology are particularly useful.
Handbook of Social Psychology, 5th ed. by Publication Date: 2010Appearing every decade or 15 years since 1954 (with a precursor in 1935), the Handbook provides a state-of-the-art overview of the field. The 5th edition's "Articles by Topic" browsing presents three topical areas: The Science of Social Psychology, The Social Being, and The Social World. See especially the chapters on "The Science of Social Psychology", which mention classic laboratory and field experiments.
APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology, 3 vols. by Publication Date: 2012One of the APA Handbooks in Psychology collection. This title is useful for its benchmarking of methods use in psychological experiments.
- More handbooks, dictionaries, and encyclopedias ...HINT! Pop open Franklin's Subject filter's "More ..." link to select narrow subject headings for your topic.
Tips on searching reference works
Where to start?
- Dictionaries - if you've got a specific term.
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Corsini, AccessMedicine, DSM-5. Choose the one most suitable for your topic, but expect to look at another one, just in case. Expect brief articles with one or two paragraphs, with citations to the classic experiment or a recent literature review.
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Handbooks. Read for a broader context. Expect long articles, with a historical perspective and lots of citations to important research.
How to search?
Start by searching with the terms you know:
- "H.M."
- Prosopagnosia
- Schachter AND Singer
- Lange AND emotion*
- (* truncates: "emotions", "emotional")
- "classical conditioning" AND phobia*
- Then try: conditioning AND phobia*
Try to search "within the work".
Ignore search results sorted by "Relevance" ranking or "Sort by 'Best Match'".
You're searching for a phrase or a couple words. How effective can relevance ranking be for that kind of search? Do your search, look at all likely results. Use your browser's "Find" tool.
Chasing citations
- Look for PennText links.
- Look for DOI's or URLs in citations.Consider installing the UPenn Proxy bookmark in your web browser, if you have access problems off-campus or outside AirPennNet.
- Use the PennText Article Finder.