LibGuides: How to Conduct a Literature Review (Health Sciences): Databases

Individual Research Databases on Health

The first time you search these databases you can login with a user ID and password that the TGI Librarian will provide you - if you have not received this, you can contact me. After that, you can create an individual account, and login with that username and password, which will you allow you to save articles for subsequent sessions.

CINAHL with Full Text
CINAHL with Full Text provides full text for many nursing and allied health journals. It covers a wide range of topics including nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines.
Using the CINAHL/MeSH Headings Feature in EBSCOhost - Video Tutorial
CINAHL - Finding Qualitative Research Articles
From University of Washington Libraries
Health Source - Consumer Edition
This collection of consumer health information provides information on many health topics including the medical sciences, food sciences and nutrition, childcare, sports medicine and general health.
Science Reference Center
Science Reference Center is a comprehensive research database that provides access to a multitude of full text science-oriented content. This database contains full text for nearly 640 science encyclopedias, reference books, periodicals, etc. Topics covered include: biology, chemistry, earth & space science, environmental science, health & medicine, history of science, life science, physics, science & society, and technology.
AHFS Consumer Medication Information
AHFS Consumer Medication Information is a trusted source and recognized standard for patient drug information, available in both English and Spanish. Published by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, AHFS includes more than a thousand drug information monographs written in lay language for consumers.

PubMed and PubMed Central

PubMed is a database of citations and abstracts for more than 27 million articles. If you use this link: Search CAM on Pubmed, your literature search will be automatically limited to the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) subset of PubMed.

PubMed Central^®(PMC) is an electronic archive of full-text journal articles, offering free access to its contents. PMC contains more than 4 million articles, most of which have a corresponding entry in PubMed. You can limit your search in many ways, including limiting it to "Complementary Medicine".

Video: PubMed Literature Search - Basic Search Strategy

The Chopra Library for Integrative Studies & Whole Health

The Chopra Library for Integrative Studies & Whole Health is archiving a world collection of cultural and scientific knowledge, research and discussion with an emphasis on integrative medicine and consciousness studies. It is an open-access resource, with 3 main fields of study:

Integrative Health (Medical sources): All subjects relating to integrative medical or psychological health. A few examples include acupuncture’s palliative effects, yoga’s health benefits, meditation’s psychological benefits and Ayurveda’s efficacy. This is the largest section in ISHAR.
Integrative Culture (Historical & Anthropological sources): All subjects relating to cultural, historical and social aspects of belief systems, cosmologies, spirituality, cultural traits and practices.
Integrative Theory (Scientific & Philosophical sources): All subjects relating to theoretical studies into integrative concepts that are scientific but not centered on medicine. Examples include consciousness research, quantum physics’ implications and philosophy.

Open Access Journals

Directory of Open Access Journals - Browse Subjects
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a community-curated online directory that provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine
BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed research articles on interventions and resources that complement or replace conventional therapies, with a specific emphasis on research that explores the biological mechanisms of action, as well as their efficacy, safety, costs, patterns of use and/or implementation.

Google Scholar

Is Google Scholar right for my research?

Google Scholar is good for...

Helping a beginning researcher identify journal titles and authors connected with subjects of interest.
Finding "gray literature" like conference proceedings. It includes many articles that wouldn't get included in other indexing services.
Locating obscure references that are proving difficult to find in conventional databases.
Locating more information on partial citations.

Google Scholar cannot...

Sort/search by disciplinary field
Limit search results with the same precision as most subscription databases

Keep in Mind:

You may get a long list of results, but you will only have access to the full text of certain articles
Not everything in Google Scholar is scholarly and it is difficult to limit to only scholarly publications. Google Scholar searches academic websites (.edu) as well as journals and publisher websites. Search results can include PowerPoints, news announcements or unpublished materials as well as articles and books.
Searching in Google Scholar is imprecise when compared with discipline-specific databases, and there are fewer options to limit or narrow search results.

Google Scholar often prompts you to pay for full text articles. In many cases, however, these articles are freely accessible to TGI students through a subscription database.