UCF Research Guides: Health Sciences: Databases

Best Bets

PubMed (MEDLINE) (1948+)
PubMed® comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

To authenticate for full-text off-campus, log in
PubMed citations and abstracts include the fields of biomedicine and health, covering portions of the life sciences, behavioral sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering. PubMed also provides access to additional relevant web sites and links to the other NCBI molecular biology resources.
PubMed is a free resource that is developed and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Publishers of journals can submit their citations to NCBI and then provide access to the full-text of articles at journal web sites using LinkOut."
CINAHL Plus with Full Text (EBSCOhost) (1937+)
Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature. Indexes nursing, allied health, biomedical, and consumer health journals.
Science Direct (1997+)
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Full text scientific, technical and medical research journals, eBooks, Reference works, handbooks and book series published by Elsevier.
Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics)
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Provides citation indexing of top high-impact journals with powerful tools such as cited reference searching and Author Finder, 256 categories thoroughly cover the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.
Citation Indexes for finding articles that cite a given author or citation.
- Science Citation Index Expanded (1965+)
- Social Sciences Citation Index (1965+)
- Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975+)

Citation Connection is now available. This includes:
- Data Citation Index (1900+)
- Derwent Innovations Index – Patents Database (1963+)
- Book Citation Index: Scholarly Books (2005+)
- Conference Proceedings Citation Index (1990+)
- Index Chemicus (IC) (1989+)
- Current Chemical Reactions (1993+)
- Current Contents Connect (1998+)

Additional Databases

APA PsycInfo (EBSCOhost) (1887+)
American Psychological Association's (APA) renowned resource for abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health.
"contains approximately 3 million citations and summaries dating as far back as the 1600s with DOIs for over 1.4 million records. Ninety-eight percent of the covered material is peer-reviewed. The database also includes information about the psychological aspects of related fields such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, technology, linguistics, anthropology, business, law and others. Journal coverage, which spans from the1800s to present, includes international material selected from around 2,500 periodicals in dozens of languages."
Psychological Abstracts:
* 1927-1947 Microfilm BF1.P65
* 1948-2004 print in remote storage
Google Scholar
Free index for broadly searching scholarly literature. This link includes the UCF institution code so links to UCF's full text subscriptions will display. See below for other ways to set institution.

View the UCF Libraries Google Scholar videos to help you make the most of Google Scholar.
To use UCF Libraries subscription access:
- Open Google Scholar Settings
- select Library Links
- Search for "University of Central Florida"
- Save
If you are on campus or connecting through Open Athens you will see UCF's subscription links automatically.
Use Google Scholar as a first step of discovery, but then focus your research by using specific databases relevant to your subject discipline.
MEDLINE (EBSCOhost) (1946+)
"provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from over 5,400 current biomedical journals."
Subject content includes anatomy; communication disorders; microbiology; paramedical professions; pathology; physiology; psychiatry; toxicology; dentistry; parasitology; reproductive biology; epidemiology; gene therapy; surgical and pharmaceutical intervention; nursing practice; ethical and legal issues; institutional operations; laboratory techniques and procedures; diagnosis and management; clinical research trials and experimental treatment protocols; legislation and regulation; allied health specialties; continuing education; investigational drugs and new drug uses, and some veterinary medicine.
Medscape
"Medscape from WebMD offers specialists, primary care physicians, and other health professionals the Web's most robust and integrated medical information and educational tools. After a simple, 1-time, free registration, Medscape from WebMD automatically delivers to you a personalized specialty site that best fits your registration profile."
SPECIALTIES
Allergy & Immunology
Anesthesiology
Business of Medicine
Cardiology
Critical Care
Dermatology
Diabetes & Endocrinology
Emergency Medicine
Family Medicine
Gastroenterology
General Surgery
Hematology-Oncology
HIV/AIDS
Infectious Diseases
Internal Medicine
Multispecialty
Nephrology
Neurology
OB/GYN & Women's Health
Oncology
Ophthalmology
Orthopedics
Pathology & Lab Medicine
Pediatrics
Plastic Surgery
Psychiatry
Public Health
Pulmonary Medicine
Radiology
Rheumatology
Transplantation
Urology

Dental and Oral Health
Medical Students
Nurses
Pharmacists

Cochrane Databases

Cochrane Library (Wiley) The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. Database of Abstracts of Review of Effects (DARE), Health Technology Assessments, and National Health Service Economic Evaluation have been retired because much of the content is freely available on other websites, such as the CRD database website.
UCF subscribes to Cochrane Library on the Wiley platform as of March 2021.
Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Wiley)
"a bibliography of controlled trials...as part of an international effort to hand search the world's journals and create an unbiased source of data for systematic reviews"
"includes reports published in conference proceedings and in many other sources not currently listed in MEDLINE or other bibliographic databases."
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Wiley)
"contains full text articles, as well as protocols focusing on the effects of healthcare"
"Data is evidence-based medicine and is often combined statistically (with meta-analysis) to increase the power of the findings of numerous studies, each too small to produce reliable results individually."
Cochrane Methodology Register (Wiley)
Search Cochrane Reviews and limit by Type = methodology
Cochrane Clinical Answers (Wiley)
"A physician-focused resource that provides answers to clinical questions. The content in Cochrane Clinical Answers is based on the high-quality evidence found in Cochrane systematic reviews."

Clinical Tools

Access Medicine
Full text medical text books and clinical library. Includes photographs and audio/video presentations related to the various texts in the collections.
Bates Visual Guide to Physical Examination
Head-to-toe and systems-based physical examination techniques for the (Advanced) Assessment or Introduction to Clinical Medicine course for Students and faculty in medical, nursing, and related programs.
Clinical Key (Elsevier)
An online search tool that provides physicians with fast clinical answers.
Provided by the College of Medicine.
DynaMed Plus (EBSCOhost)
A point-of-care reference resource providing clinicians with evidence to support clinical decision-making. DynaMed Plus includes mobile and app access: sign up for a free account on the DynaMed Plus index page. You must be on campus or signed in with your NID to create an account.
Micromedex
Provides drug, disease, and toxicology information, as well as patient education documents and pediatric and neonatal evidence for patient safety.
Provided by UCF College of Medicine
Merck Manual
"Find information on medical topics, symptoms, drugs, procedures, news and more, written for the health care professional."
New England Journal of Medicine: Videos
A a searchable archive of videos and other multimedia on various topics from The New England Journal of Medicine. Click on Learning/CME tab to view the Interactive Medical Cases.
Pediatric Care Online (from AAP, American Academy of Pediatrics)
A premier pediatric point-of-care resource which integrates many different pediatric resources for quick access. Includes a visual library, videos, eBooks, drug look-up, and point-of-care resources.
PEPID Clinical Rotation Companion Online
PEPID is a medical reference for your mobile device, PDA or online.
- Clinical Rotation Companion
- Medical Dictionary
- Lab Manuals
- Peds Module
- DDX Module
- Patient Education Mode
Provided by the College of Medicine.

Sage Research Methods

Sage Research Methods
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Full text of book, journal, and reference content to aid as students research design methodologies, understand and select methods, conduct research, and write findings.
Includes tools such as:
- Project Planner: find step-by-step guidance to complete your research project
- Which Stats Test: answer questions to see which statistical method is best for your data
includes the complete series of:
- Little Green Books -- Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences
- Little Blue Books -- Qualitative Research Methods
Sage Research Methods Cases
Peer reviewed case of how real research projects were conducted. The collection provides more than 500 case studies, showing the challenges and successes of doing research, written by the researchers themselves.
They explain why the researchers chose the methods they did, how they overcame problems in their research and what they might have done differently with hindsight: the realities of research that are missing from journal articles and textbooks. Cases are peer-reviewed and come with pedagogical tools including learning objectives and discussions questions. They can be used as a teaching tool to demonstrate a particular method and how it is applied in real research, or as inspiration to students who are preparing for their own research project."

The Libraries have access to Parts 1, 2, and Medicine and Health. Browse by method, discipline, or academic level.
Sage Research Methods Datasets
A collection of topical, engaging practice and teaching datasets with instructional guides that give students a chance to learn data analysis by practicing themselves.
The datasets are indexed by method and data type, are optimized to use in classroom exercises or in exam papers, saving faculty members hours spent sourcing and cleaning data themselves. The decisions researchers make when analyzing data can seem like a black box for students—through practicing analysis using real data from SAGE Research Methods Datasets, students can see how analytic decisions are made, helping them to become confident researchers.

The Libraries have access to datasets 1 & 2.
Browse by method, discipline, or data type.
Sage Research Methods Video
Video tutorials, case study videos, expert interviews, and more, covering the entire research methods and statistics curriculum.
The videos can help to bring methods to life: instead of reading about how to conduct a focus group, students can watch one in action. Stimulate class discussions by assigning videos for pre-class viewing, or use a clip in class to provide an alternative viewpoint. Videos can also be embedded into course management systems for exam preparation. Through these videos, 60% of which are exclusive to SAGE, students can find extra help and support to guide them through every step of their research project and succeed in their research methods course."

Browse by method, discipline, or video type.

Database Search Tips

Boolean Operators

AND
diabetes AND elderly
OR
elderly OR aged
NOT
diabetes NOT children

Modifiers and Truncation

Use quotes for exact phrases.
Example: "tobacco smoke pollution"
Use parentheses to group terms.
("tobacco smoke pollution" AND child)
Use the asterisk for branching terms. This finds any words that starts with the stem term.
Example: child* (includes child OR children OR childhood)

Building a Search Query

Example search using Boolean operators, quotes, parentheses, and wildcard:
("tobacco smoke pollution" OR "secondhand smoke") AND child* AND (lung* OR "cardiovascular system")