Research Guides: TUH EBP & Research Council: Searching

Types of Sources

As you get ready to search, you should also consider what types of sources are most relevant to your topic. What does “the literature” consist of?

Peer-reviewed articles: Usually, the overwhelming majority of the literature you review will be scholarly articles, published in peer reviewed journals
Dissertations
Primary Sources: Depending on your area of study, you may also include primary sources. In medicine, this may be data or images like scans.
Books and reference materials (such as background information on a disease that you find in UptoDate or Dynamed) may be helpful in getting a handle on a topic and pointing you in the direction of scholarly sources.

Databases by Research Topic

PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed comprises more than 37 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. MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online) is the largest component of PubMed and consists primarily of journal citations; articles indexed with MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and curated with funding, genetic, chemical and other metadata.
CINAHL This link opens in a new window
CINAHL Provides indexing for nursing and health journals. The database contains records dating back to 1972. In addition, the database offers access to health care books, nursing dissertations, and selected conference proceedings.
CINAHL Abstracting and Indexing Database
Nurses, allied health professionals, researchers, nurse educators and students depend on the CINAHL Database to research their subject areas from this authoritative index of nursing and allied health journals. CINAHL indexes the top nursing and allied health literature available including nursing journals and publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses Association. CINAHL also includes rigorous curation and indexing of open access (OA) journals, which has resulted in a growing collection of 1,446 active global OA journals.  Once validated and certified for inclusion, these OA journals are treated with high-quality subject indexing and sophisticated, precise/accurate full-text linking.
Subject Headings
CINAHL Subject Headings help users effectively search and retrieve information and follow the structure of the Medical Subject headings (MeSH) used by the National Library of Medicine. These Subject Headings help researchers find new concepts, including COVID-19, social distancing and vaping as well as local terminology.
Content Includes
3,814 active indexed and abstracted journals
3,461 active peer-reviewed indexed and abstracted journals
1,312 journals with searchable cited references
Embase This link opens in a new window
EMBASE contains references to journal articles in biomedicine. The references consist of authors, title, journal data, abstract and keywords. EMBASE contains European literature, and coverage in the field of drug research, pharmacology and pharmaceutics. The database can be searched back to 1974.
Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that contain different types of evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. This collection also provides information about Cochrane groups.

Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts contains journals from various countries focusing on health, social services, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, race relations and education.
ProQuest Social Science Premium Collection This link opens in a new window
Social Science Premium Collection contains international literature in social sciences, including politics, public policy, sociology, social work, anthropology, criminology, linguistics, library science, and education.

APA PsycArticles This link opens in a new window
APA PsycArticles is a full-text ejournal collection from the American Psychological Association, Canadian Psychological Association, and Hogrefe & Huber Publishers.
APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
APA PsycInfo contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books and technical reports, as well as citations to dissertations, all in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines, such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business and law.

ERIC [via EBSCOhost] This link opens in a new window
ERIC [via EBSCOhost] contains bibliographic records of research reports, conference papers, teaching guides, books, and journal articles relating to the practice of education. ERIC Digests are included. Covers the period 1966-present.
Education Source This link opens in a new window
Education Source provides a full-text collection of education journals, and encompasses an international array of English-language periodicals, monographs, yearbooks. It covers all levels of education--from early childhood to higher education.

SPORTDiscus with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Concurrent user limit: 8
SPORT Discus is a full text international sports database which covers the fields of exercise, medicine, biomechanics, coaching and sports medicine.
AccessPhysiotherapy This link opens in a new window
Access Physiotherapy from McGraw-Hill features learning tools such as video demonstrations, image slides, online dissection, and quizzes. The complete contents of physical therapy textbooks and resources such as Orthopaedic Examination, Evaluation, and Intervention; Pharmacology for the Physical Therapist; Therapeutic Modalities for Rehabilitation; Imaging in Rehabilitation; and others, are included.

Crafting a Search Strategy

Brainstorm search terms and synonyms
Test in databases: which give you the most relevant results?
Identify subject vocabulary and terms: Look at the articles you've found in your test runs, and see how the authors are describing your topic. What words are they using? What seems to be the "official" vocabulary around your subject? Use these subject terms in your future searches.
Search in multiple databases: to get a well-rounded search and make sure you're fully capturing the research landscape around your topic, search in a variety of databases (some broad and multidisciplinary, some subject-specific)

Example

Sample Question:

In patients of color, does the use of glycolic acid peels reduce the severity of melasma?

You'll want to pull out the phrases that could be potential search terms. The highlighted phrases below demonstrate this.

In patients of color, does the use of glycolic acid peels reduce the severity of melasma?

Synonyms for these words and phrases

Original term	Patients of Color	Glycolic Acid Peels	Melasma
Synonyms	Skin of color	Glycolates	Chloasma
	Brown skin	Chemical peels	Hyperpigmentation
	Black skin		Mask of pregnancy
	Dark skin
	African American patients
	Latinx patients

Simple Search Example

To start you can do a simple search of any database, PubMed is a good place to start.

Simple search example: Skin of color glycolic acid melasma

You would just copy and paste this right into the general search bar.

(VIDEO) How PubMed Works: Introduction (1:22:22)

Adding Subject Headings

Subject headings are the official subjects assigned to articles within databases. They both explain the content of the article and help you find the article.

MeSH Term Database
MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) is the NLM controlled vocabulary thesaurus used for indexing articles for PubMed.

You can use the MeSH term database on PubMed to find more search terms related to your topic.

Here are some MeSH terms related to our search terms chemical exfoliation and melasma from our previous example.

MeSH terms:

Chemexfoliation

Melanosis*/ diagnosis

Melanosis*/ therapy

You can add these terms into your searches to find more articles!

(VIDEO) How PubMed Works: Medical Subject Headings (1:02:00)

Advanced Search Example

For more advanced searches you will use synonyms with the word OR between them. Or gets you More! You are telling the database that you want articles that contain at least one of those phrases in your search.

(skin of color OR skin pigmentation[Mesh] OR skin pigmentation OR dark skin tone OR African Americans OR Latinx)

Then you'll string two different ideas together with the word AND. This means that we want articles that contain at least one of the phrases from the string of terms AND at least one of the phrases from the following strings of terms.

(skin of color OR skin pigmentation[Mesh] OR skin pigmentation OR dark skin tone OR African Americans OR Latinx)

AND

(glycolic acid OR glycolic acid peel OR glycolates OR chemical peels OR chemexfoliation[Mesh] OR chemexfoliation)

AND

(melasma OR Chloasma OR Hyperpigmentation OR melanosis[Mesh] OR melanosis)

You can also see that I included a MeSH heading. I want articles that are tagged with that subject heading. But newer articles can take up to one year to get their MeSH headings tagged, so you also want to enter that search term as just a keyword as well.

(VIDEO) PubMed Tips for Expert Searchers (1:45:00)

Simple Search Vs. Advanced Search Comparison

Simple Search:

Skin of color glycolic acid melasma

Total results in PubMed: 4

Advanced Search:

(skin of color OR skin pigmentation[Mesh] OR skin pigmentation OR dark skin tone OR african Americans OR Latinx) AND (glycolic acid OR glycolic acid peel OR glycolates OR chemical peels OR chemexfoliation) AND (melasma OR Chloasma OR Hyperpigmentation OR melanosis[Mesh] OR melanosis)

Total results in PubMed: 142

Because we used synonyms and MeSH terms we got more results!