PsycINFO is the most important and most comprehensive index to the psychological literature. This database indexes articles on psychology topics which have been published in academic journals. It will also identify chapters from books, dissertations and reports.
PsycINFO will tell you the article exists, give you a summary (abstract), and often links to the full text of the actual article.
PsycInfo indexes articles published anytime between 1887 to present, and for books 1987 to present.
In some libraries, this database is called Psychological Abstracts or PsycLit - it's the same database, with the same content, but the name & interface varies according to the vendor/sales company the library is using.
This 3 minute video from the Peabody Library at Vanderbilt University talks about the differences between popular and scholarly articles. It also mentions trade publications.
Literature review articles summarise what is known about a topic, and indicate where future researchers might usefully focus their attention. The authors do not report the results of new research, but tell us briefly what research has already been done by other people. These journals publish literature review articles:
Annual reviews in psychology, clinical psychology. These books are published every year, and contain articles reviewing the literature on topics of current interest. Very useful!
Current opinion in psychology.
Or instead of browsing, you can use the methodology limiter in the PsycInfo Search Options to show only literature review type articles in your result list:
Using appropriate jargon can improve search results. Here are some words and phrases used in forensic psychology related subject headings, in the PsycINFO database:
Antisocial personality disorder
Bystander effect
Competency to stand trial
Dangerousness
Family conflict
Homicide
Forensic evaluation
Insanity defense
Intimate partner violence
Partner abuse
Personality measures
Serial homicide
Witnesses
On the library home page, www.lib.jjay.cuny.edu click the Journal Titles tab:
Then type in the name of the journal, NOT the article title. Hint: the journal title is often printed in italics.