Recommended Journal Databases
- APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window Provides access to articles, books and book chapters, and dissertations that cover the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences. Includes material of relevance to psychologists and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work.
- Embase This link opens in a new window Embase.com is the database equivalent of EXCERPTA MEDICA. It is a comprehensive, international database covering Anesthesiology, Human Genetics, Gerontology, Drug Research, Pharmacology, Drug Side Effects and Interactions, Toxicology, Human Medicine (Clinical and Experimental), including Pediatrics and Obstetrics & Gynecology, Basic Biological Sciences, Biotechnology, Biomedicine, Health Policy and Management, Pharmacoeconomics, Public and Occupational Health, Environmental Health, Pollution Control, Substance Dependence and Abuse, Psychiatry, Forensic Science, Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Nursing.
- CINAHL: Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature This link opens in a new window Covers journal publications from the nursing and allied health professions. While it primarily covers journal citations, it also includes book chapter abstracts, dissertations, and conference abstracts.
- PubMed This link opens in a new window Comprehensive coverage of abstracts to the biomedical literature. Includes medicine, the allied health disciplines, and biomedical literature. Materials range from 1809 Onwards, with more recent decades better represented.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new window This database is a core general science resource, covering all aspects of scientific literature. It also has a number of tools that make it a unique resource for finding scholarly literature. Item records come with links both to the works cited by the paper in question and the future works that cite that paper. Web of Science also allows the user to set up email alerts for specific authors or topics, provides researcher profiles, and to use associated journal metrics provided by the vendor.
Database Searching Tips
What is controlled vocabulary?
- Most databases have what is called "controlled vocabulary."
- "Controlled vocabulary" refers to the standard words and phrases that indexers of the database use to describe populations, conditions, interventions, and more.
- Using controlled vocabulary can help you zero in on the information that you need more quickly.
Where to find controlled vocabulary:
- Look up PubMed's controlled vocabulary in the MeSH database.
- Search for CINAHL's controlled vocabulary by using their subject headings database.
- Search APA PsycInfo's subject database to find controlled vocabulary.
Controlled vocabulary example in a database:
Here are MeSH terms for an article on adults with long COVID. Using these MeSH terms will help you find similar articles.
Boolean terms are words include AND, OR, and NOT.
- Typing in Kenya OR East Africa into the database will find articles on either or both Kenya and East Africa.
- Kenya AND maternal health will pull articles that mention both Kenya and maternal health.
- "maternal health" NOT "child health" will eliminate articles about "child health."
Truncation is also known as wild card searching. It allows you to search for different variations of a word. In most databases, you can truncate a keyword by adding the asterisk symbol* at the end of the root of a keyword. Here are some examples:
- adolescen* searches the database for adolescents, adolescent, or adolescence
- female* searches for the keywords female (singular) or females (plural)
