Find Articles & Dissertations
- CINAHL: Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature This link opens in a new windowA core database for occupational therapy research, CINAHL provides access to journals in the allied health fields.
- APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new windowThis is an excellent database for articles related to mental health rehabilitation, brain injuries, and human development.
- PubMed This link opens in a new windowA large biomedical database covering all areas of the health sciences.
- ERIC (via ProQuest) This link opens in a new windowERIC is an education database and is helpful if you are looking for articles on occupational therapy in school settings.
- Embase This link opens in a new windowA large biomedical database with international journal coverage.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowWeb of Science is interdisciplinary in scope and allows you to do cited reference searching.
- ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Citation Index (via Web of Science) This link opens in a new window Comprehensive curated collection of multi-disciplinary dissertations and theses from around the world, offering over 5 million citations from thousands of universities. On the Web of Science platform see connected research via citation linking.
Are you only finding an article abstract but not the full-text of the article? Not to worry, the 
will lead you to the full-text of the article.
Integrated into many BU journal databases, the Find@BU button will help you get to the article in one of three ways:
- If BU has the full-text of the article through an online journal subscription, you will see a link that will take you directly to the article or the online journal.
- If BU subscribes to the print journal in which the article appeared, you will see information about which BU Library carries the print volumes, and the call number of the title.
- IF BU does not subscribe to either a print or online version of a journal, you will be given an option to get the article from another article. A link will take you to our interlibrary loan request form. Once you fill out this form, you will receive a pdf copy of the article within 48 hours of your request.
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 social communication skills among children with Autism. Using these MeSH terms will help you find similar articles.
Boolean terms are words include AND, OR, and NOT.
- Typing in Autism OR Autistic Disorder into the database will find articles on either or both Autism or Autistic disorder.
- Autism AND social skills will pull articles that mention both Autism and social skills.
- "Autism" NOT "developmental disorder*" will eliminate articles about :developmental disorders.
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)
