This article questions if information retrieval of Psychology on the Lilacs database is affected when a specific terminology is not used. Indexing of 124 journal articles in psychology that comprises the databases LILACS (Latin-American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciencies Information) and Index Psi is analyzed. We observed that 52% of the articles were well represented by the terminology in psychology, for more specific terms of the area; 35% were similarly represented by both vocabularies, and 13% were better indexed by using DeCS (Descriptors in Health Sciences, developed from MeSH). We conclude that a possible solution to achieve a good representation of Psychology would be the inclusion of more terms in the DeCS, because this area contributes with 78 titles of journals in LILACS corresponding until now to 16.324 registered articles.
Information retrieval; Indexing; Terminology; Scientific Journals
