Research Databases and Other Online Tools

The following online databases and other tools are helpful for literature searches, reporting guidelines, experiment preparation, and more.

Literature Searching

Free Access

PubMed: National Library of Medicine database of biomedical literature citations from MEDLINE, life sciences journals, and online books
PubMed Central: Searchable, full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature; includes final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds, per the NIH Public Access Policy.
ERIC: U.S. Department of Education database of education-related literature, including journal articles, conferences, government documents, reports, books, and bibliographies
Google Scholar: Search the Web for peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts, and technical reports from broad areas of research.

Subscription Required

Check with your library for access.

CINAHL: Database of nursing and allied health journals and other resources
The Cochrane Library: A collection of seven evidence-based medicine databases
ComDisDome: Database of communication sciences and disorders books and journal articles
Communication and Mass Media Complete: Includes journals in communication, mass media, and related fields, including CommSearch database formerly produced by the National Communication Association
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts: Database of journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, and book reviews covering phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics
MEDLINE: Database of biomedical journals
PsycINFO: Database of psychology journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations
Science Direct: Database of science, technology and medicine journal articles, book chapters, and open access content
Web of Science, Science Citation Index, and Social Science Citation Index: Databases of all cited references captured from indexed articles

Reporting Guidelines

Equator Network
Database of reporting guidelines for health research

Experiment Preparation

Lexical Databases

ARC Nonword Database: Macquarie University. Database of non-words and pseudo-homophones, including neighbor values, bigram/trigram frequency, and more
CELEX: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Lexical database including frequency, orthography, phonology, morphology, and syntax
Child Mental Lexicon Calculator: Holly Storkel, Word and Sound Learning Lab, University of Kansas. Calculate phonotactic probability and neighborhood density based on child corpora of spoken American English
Cross-Linguistic Easy-Access Resource for Phonological and Orthographic Neighborhood Densities (CLEARPOND): Northwestern Bilingualism and Psycholinguistics Laboratory. Calculate and search by phonological and orthographic neighborhood information within and between five languages: Dutch, English, French, German, and Spanish
English Lexicon Project Website: David Balota, the Cognitive Psychology Laboratory, Washington University in St. Louis. Lexical database, along with behavioral data from visual lexical decision and naming studies
International Picture Naming Project: Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego. Picture stimuli with naming norms in seven languages, searchable by lexical parameters as well as percent name agreement, reaction time, and visual complexity
IPhOD: Irvine Phonotactic Online Dictionary: Kenny Vaden, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, Irvine. Provides phonotactic probability, neighborhood density values, and phonologic neighbors for words and nonwords, and finds words within user-specified criteria ranges
MC Word: An Orthographic Wordform Database: Language Imaging Laboratory, Medical College of Wisconsin. Calculate orthographic neighborhood frequencies and generate lists of nonwords
Phonotactic Probability Calculator: Michael Vitevitch, Spoken Language Laboratory, University of Kansas. Calculate the frequency with which phonological segments occur in a given position in a word
University of South Florida Free Association Norms: Douglas L. Nelson, Cathy L. McEvoy, and Thomas A. Schreiber. The largest database of free association ever collected in the United States
USENET: Westbury Lab, University of Alberta. Orthographic word frequencies collected between 2005 and 2006
Speech & Hearing Lab Neighborhood Database: Mitchell Sommers, Washington University in St. Louis. Information on orthographic and phonologic targets, including orthographic and phonologic neighborhoods (based on Pisoni’s Hoosier Mental Lexicon Database; Nusbaum, Pisoni, & Davis, 1984)
Wordbank: Analyze Macarthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory data from 19 languages in terms of aggregate vocabulary, individual items, demographic variables, and more
WordNet: Princeton University. Search nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs by meaning
Wordplay: State University of New York Geneseo. Search words by length, frequency, string match, spoken frequency (based on Pastizzo & Carbone, 2007), and USF Free Association Norms.

Shared Data Sets

The Fromkin Speech Error Database: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Corpus of speech errors coded by target language, error type, process procedure, and process direction
Moss Aphasia Psycholinguistics Project Database: Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute (MRRI). Database of experimental behavioral data from persons with aphasia, including picture naming and other tests of cognitive function.
NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD): Data from longitudinal study about the relationships between child care experiences, child care characteristics, and children's developmental outcomes; must apply for data access
Rehabilitation Dataset Directory, Center for Rehabilitation Research using Large Datasets (CRRLD): Helps identify potential secondary sources of large-scale datasets
TalkBank: Coordinated by Brian MacWhinney, Carnegie Mellon University. Shared databases of recordings and coded transcripts within subfields studying communication, including aphasia, audiology, bilingualism, Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES; includes CHAT, transcription guidelines for language acquisition data, and CLAN, programs to analyze the data), conversational analysis, dementia, phonological and phonetic analysis, second language acquisition, and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Other

Community of Science Pivot: Database for finding funding, promoting your work, identifying experts, managing resources, and collaborating with colleagues (must be affiliated with an institution that subscribes; free trial available)
The CMU Pronouncing Dictionary: Carnegie Mellon University. Transcribes text into machine-readable ARPAbet symbols
Mix and Match: Maarten van Casteren, Medical Research Council, Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Pseudo-randomize stimuli and match the conditions of factorial experiment
MTurk: Online data gathering tool run by Amazon
NIH Toolbox: A standard set of measures assessing cognitive, emotional, motor and sensory function from ages 3-85
Phonetic Transcription: Transcribes text into International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) or other phonetic alphabets
Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS), NIH: Reliable, precise measures of patient–reported health status for physical, mental, and social well–being
SurveyMonkey: Online data gathering tool (basic service requires registration, but is free of charge)
Text to Speech: Turns text into speech with options to modulate speed, pitch, dialects, and more
Zotero: Collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources with this free, downloadable web browser tool. See MIT Libraries for helpful Zotero training materials.

If you would like to suggest an additional research database or other online tool for us to consider adding to this page, please let us know at research@asha.org