PsycINFO® records have several date fields that provide information about the creation of the scholarly work and information about the creation of the PsycINFO record in the APA database. In this post, we’ll explain what these different dates mean and how you can use them in your search.
What do all these different dates mean?
The Publication Date is the date that the journal article or book chapter was delivered or made available to customers or subscribers. For journal articles, you may also see Publication History dates – First Submitted, Revised, and First Posting.
The Release Date is the date that the record was added to the PsycINFO database. You may also see a Correction Date in some records that were updated after the release date.
Usually, the publication date is only a few weeks before the release date on PsycINFO. But sometimes, material published at an earlier date, such as older issues of a journal, will be added to PsycINFO.
Searching by Publication Date
If you want to find the most recently published items, you’ll want to search by Publication Date.
There are several ways to search by Publication Date.
- On APA PsycNET®’s Advanced Search page, Use the Date limit to specify a preset range – 1 year ago to present, 3 years ago to present, or 5 years ago to present – or set your own range of years.
2. On the search results page, use the option to Filter Results by Year in the left-hand side, or sort by Year to view the most recently published materials first.
Searching by Release Date
If you are running a saved search to see what’s new on PsycINFO, it can be a good idea to use the Release Date limit. This way you’ll see both new publications, and relevant older materials that have been recently added to PsycINFO.
There are two ways to search by Release Date on APA PsycNET.
- On the Advanced Search page, use Added to PsycNET to limit to records added in the last 7 days, 14 days, or 30 days. Note: this tool is only available on APA PsycNET.
2. On the Advanced Search page, change “Any Field” to “Release Date.” Enter your date using the format YYYYMMDD, or use asterisks to search for YYYY* or YYYYMM*.
If you plan to run a search periodically to check for new materials added to PsycINFO, a better strategy is to save the search and set up a Search Alert, so you’ll be notified automatically. See our Learning Commons post for more information.
