Journals, Publishers, and Databases

What's the Difference?

What's the difference between articles, journals, and databases? Using the article "Are Pets a Healthy Pleasure? The Influence of Pets on Blood Pressure," we will map the differences and how they all connect.  

The article, "Are Pets a Healthy Pleasure? The Influence of Pets on Blood Pressure" is a research article, which means it will be published in a specific journal. In this case it is published in “Current Directions in Psychological Science” The journal will publish at least 1 issue a year, and each issue will contain several articles. 

Journals are typically published by a larger publisher. In this instance, “Current Directions in Psychological Science” is published by Sage Journals. Sage Journals publishes over 1,100 journals.  

To find articles you can look directly in journals -- however, you will probably use databases. You can find articles and journals through a database like “Academic Search Complete". Databases are search engines that make all of the articles findable online. 

Databases are sold to universities by database providers. EBSCOhost provides access to the Academic Search Complete database, along with many others.