Information Sources

Information Sources for Health Sciences

Updated February 2008 by Mick Draper

Which database should I use?
Information about the best databases for searching

Academic Onefile More than 1,500 journals in full text coverage includes physical sciences, technology, health, & social sciences. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Academic Search Premier Has broad coverage of all academic areas. Indexes around 8,200 journals with full text from more than 4,600 of these. It's best in the Advanced Search mode because the results display is better than in Basic. Increase the number of citations found by using Subject Terms and keywords in combination. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

AIDSinfo Search for guidelines, clinical trials, drugs or vaccines used for AIDS. From U.S. Dept of Health and Human services. Open access.

Alcohol and Alcohol Problems Science Database Databases, journals and websites related to alcohol research. From National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

APAIS citations only (1978-) An Australian database covering mostly social sciences, and scientific topics of public interest. Many of the journals it indexes are not academic, so it should be used with caution. Clinical articles not indexed. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only. Also in print BSL REF 994.005 A93 from 1945-
APA-FT APAIS Citations from 1978 and Fulltext from 1995

AustHealth Seven databases covering aspects of health in Australia. Mostly professional level articles. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only. This link will search all 7 databases simultaneously. You can also use the links below to search the separate databases.
1. DRUG Published and unpublished material on the psychosocial aspects of substance abuse.
2. ATSIhealth Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Health bibliography
3. Health & Society A bibliographic database covering health policy and services, social, psychological, legal and ethical issues related to families.
4. Australasian Medical Index Index of Australian journals not indexed in Medline 1966-. You can use MeSH in this database. Meditext has full text for selected articles.
5. APAIS health The legal, social, & ethical aspects of Australian health from the APAIS database. Mostly consumer level citations.
6. AusportMed Published and unpublished material on medical and health issues in Australian sport.
7. Rural which is several small databases
7.1 Education for Rural Medical Practice 1966-
7.2 Indigenous Peoples Health 1975-
7.3 Rural and Remote Area Nursing 1975-
7.4 Rural and Remote Health Care 1955-
7.5 Rural and Remote Area Aged Care 1980 - 1996
7.6 Promoting Rural Men's Health 1966 - 1999
7.7 Rural and Remote Area Health Care: 1996-

Australian Digital Theses Program An online database of Australian theses. Some abstracts only, some full text. Includes all Uni of Adelaide PhD and Masters theses from 2007 onwards.

Australian Medicines Handbook An up to date, evidence-based information source on currently approved medicines for use in Australia. This publication is independent of support by drug companies.

Biological abstracts RRM (Reviews, Reports, and Meetings) Covers review articles, US patents, books, and papers from meetings, symposia, transactions etc. It covers all areas of biology. Available in print at Barr Smith Library 570.5 B602. Library holds 1980-1998.

BioMed Central This site provides many open access journals on biomedical topics. The full text articles published by these open access journals are free for anyone to view.

Biosis Previews Biological abstracts and Biological abstracts RRM from ISI Web of Knowledge Citations to millions of life sciences journal articles from 1980 to the present. The database contains many citations to medical and life sciences topics. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

CAB Abstracts This database has information on agriculture and ecology. You can use cabicodes in Advanced Search to limit searches to Human Health and Hygiene. There is a link to the codes on the Advanced search site. To limit results to all human health cabicodes add and cc=vv* to your search. Citations are from 1910 to the present. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

CINAHL Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (1982-). A sophisticated electronic database for nursing and related fields. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Clinical Pharmacology Consumer level information on US drugs, herbals, supplements, and new drugs under investigation. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only. Use the Advanced Search mode because the results display is better than in Basic.

Clinical Reference Systems Contains short, consumer level essays on a range of health issues. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only. Use the Advanced Search mode because the results display is better than in Basic.

Cochrane Library A database that reviews published and unpublished clinical trials. This is the premier database for evidence-based practice. Full text of Cochrane Systematic Reviews, citations and often abstracts of other items. Background Notes on the Cochrane Library can be found on Maureen Bell's Evidence Based Medicine page. There is also a guide on how to search from The NICS Guide to the Cochrane Library, and Mick's notes with graphics on Using Cochrane Library with dental examples. Access to all Australian connections.

Current contents connect Covers a wide range of disciplines including Agriculture, Biology, Environmental Sciences, Clinical Medicine, and Life Sciences. Very up to date with new refs added each week. New references matching a profile sent to email addresses. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Emerald Fulltext Mainly a management database but it includes full text articles on a range of health sciences topics but especially health care management and food and nutrition. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Family (Australian Family & Society Abstracts) Citations to books, journal articles, government documents etc. FAMILY (Australian Family & Society Abstracts) Has citations on sexual behaviour, fertility, & counselling, including grief counselling.
From 1980- . Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Grey Literature A database of biomedical literature not available from commercial publishers. From New York Academy of Medicine. This site unavailable Feb 2007.

Health business fullTEXT elite Full text of health business journals. Use Advanced Search for better display of results. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Health Source - Consumer Edition Full text of consumer level journal articles. Use Advanced Search for better display of results. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition Indexes journal articles in many areas of medicine not just nursing, many articles in full text. Use Advanced Search for better display of results. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

HealthWIZ
Access is available only within the Barr Smith Library - it is not networked
Consists of statistical data held in the National Social Health Database which can be used to understand and describe characteristics of local populations, analyses patterns and trends in the use of local health services, establish patterns of health and illness at a local level, discover geographic variations in health related characteristics of populations, and demonstrate links between health, service use and socio-economic factors relating to health. It is intended for use by workers in the fields of community health and welfare, planners, advocates, researchers, educators, and students. More help is available at the HealthWIZ site.

Heaps: Health Education and Promotion System Australian and New Zealand health promotion projects.

Index to theses A database of abstracts of theses from the UK and Ireland. From 1716 - . Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Instructions to Authors in the Health Sciences A long list of instructions pages for journals. In alphabetical order by journal title. From Raymond H. Mulford Library Medical College of Ohio.

Journal citation reports Find impact factors and other stats about major journals. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

MAIS (Multicultural Australia and Immigration Studies) Citations to books, journals, government documents etc about Australian immigration and multicultural issues. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

MDConsult Search clinical ebooks, ejournals, review journals, a drugs database, news, practice guidelines, patient handouts, and cases on a wide area of clinic medicine from specific tabs or from a single search engine. Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only. Useful for undergraduate MBBS students.

Meditext This database includes full text of selected articles from Australasian Medical Index database (See under AustHealth). Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Medline from ScienceDirect This subscribed version of Medline is available only to the Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users.You can register for the alert service, and save searches. Note this version of Medline doesn't include explosion.

Medline from Web of Knowledge Not as comprehensive as PubMed (see below). It includes explosion of searches including when used with Cross Search (see below). Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

NLM Gateway The U.S. National Library of Medicine database for MEDLINE/PubMed, OLDMEDLINE, LOCATORplus, MEDLINEplus, DIRLINE, AIDS Meetings, Health Services Research Meetings, Space Life Sciences Meetings, and HSRProj (research projects in progress). Searches across a multiplicity of NLM databases.

NLM History of Medicine Images and manuscripts from U.S. National Library of Medicine.

NLM Training Manuals and Resources Training manuals for PubMed, Gateway, ClinicalTrials.gov, and other NLM databases.

OMIM Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man. A human genetics database on the web.

Oxford journals More than 60 life sciences, biology, & medicine journals but only from Oxford University Press. Many of the journals have extensive archives. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

POPLINE Citations with abstracts to world literature on population, family planning and related health issues. From Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.

Pre-CINAHL This is a current awareness database for finding articles about to be added to CINAHL (see above). Use the Advanced Search mode for a better display of the results. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Proquest Dissertations and Theses A database of abstracts of theses mainly from North America. From 1861- . Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

PsycARTICLES More than 100,000 full text articles in psychology. Use Advanced Search for better display of results. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only. From 1894-

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection A database of more than 570 journals, with more than 540 in full text. Topics include psychiatry, psychology, emotions, and mental processes. Use the Advanced Search mode because the results display is better than in Basic. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

PsycINFO Covers all aspects of psychology. Also in print in BSL as Psychological abstracts 150.5 P9 from 1927- . Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

PubMed from U.S. National Library of Medicine. More than 16 million citations from more than 4,000 journals, some are in full text. Uni of Adelaide community can click on Uni of Adelaide Online icons when using Abstract format, to get access to full text. Includes MY NCBI, a Save Search option and email alert for articles that fit the saved search profile.
BSL PubMed tutorial Includes info on how to use a range of search methods, and the output formats.
PubMed tutorial The official National Library of Medicine version.

This database is also available as the printed Index medicus (and other titles) back to 19th cent. and Index to dental literature (1963-1995).

ScienceDirect Elsevier journals in full text. Many journals in the areas of medicine and life sciences. Also includes a version of Medline where you can save searches and alerts, but with no explosion available. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Science citation index Print, BSL 505 S41045. 1970-1993. See Web of Science For online access from 1980-

SciFinder Scholar (Chemical abstracts) 1907- This is a huge database of bibliographic citations, on chemical substances and their reactions. It includes citations to articles on drugs. This is strictly limited to Uni of Adelaide staff and students. It can be searched in the Library on computers 335 and 336 near the information desk or you can download client software for use on a computer linked to the University network.
For help, see the Library's introductory guide or use the full user guide when online. CAS's SciFinder Scholar web site also has a tutorial and guides on searching.

Scopus A general database but includes health and life sciences citations from more than 5,000 health science titles and 3,000 life science titles. Includes citation tracking to find who has cited articles you already know about, as well as finding articles by subject. Includes alerts Brief guide on searching Scopus.

Social sciences citation index Print, BSL 300.5 S655. 1966/70-1993. See Web of Science For online access from 1980-

Sociological abstracts Covers sociology and related subjects in the social and behavioural sciences. (1952-) Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

SpringerLink Search the Springer journals by keyword or by menu searches. You can register to set up alerts. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Toxline Toxicology bibliographic information from the U.S. National Library of Medicine

Web of Knowledge The home page from which to search ISI Thompson databases to which the Uni of Adelaide subscribes. These include Biosis Previews, CAB Abstracts, Current contents connect, Medline, Web of science and Journal citation reports. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Web of Science 1980- An online version of Science citation index, and Social sciences citation index. Includes abstracts, cited references, citing references. Use this to find out which articles cite articles you already know about. Access for Uni of Adelaide community and walk in users only.

Wiley Interscience Full text online journals from Wiley. Access for Uni of Adelaide community only.

Zoological Record Comprehensive coverage of zoological topics including peer reviewed and popular literature. Includes humans as hosts for animals, anthropological aspects of zoology, and evolution. 1978+. Access for Uni of Adelaide community only.
Print version at BSL REF 590.5 Z874 1870+

General Sources

University of Adelaide Library Resources for Subjects A list of online and print sources for finding information on subjects taught at Uni of A. Produced by U of A Research Librarians.

General Health Sciences guide Includes links to guides for Health Sciences disciplines

Citating Articles This site gives links to Uni of Adelaide databases that can help you to find citing articles for those papers you know about already.

Dentistry Subject Guide

Endnote This is a bibliographic database management system that produces a standard format for references. It produces and formats bibliographies for theses and journal publications. It comes free to University of Adelaide staff and students. There are online EndNote tutorials for versions 7 or 9 .

FAQ for Science Postgraduates and Staff Library information for research compiled by Jane Wannan

Instructions to Authors in the Health Sciences A long list of instructions pages for journals. In alphabetical order by journal title. From Raymon H. Mulford Library Medical College of Ohio

Journal Abbreviations The Uni of Adelaide Library catalogue doesn't always find titles if you use abbreviations. It's best to use the full title of the journal.
Here is the PubMed Journals Database.
Enter the abbreviation, then click on the Go button to find the full title. If this doesn't work there are print resources in the Barr Smith Library that can help.
Begin with
Periodical title abbreviations. 14th edition Shelved at Barr Smith Information desk
If you need more help ask at the Information Desk

Journal Info Find information about journals in your field including whether they are open access, if self archiving of manuscripts is permitted, indexing databases and quality measures.

Uni of Adelaide Library Citation Linker Enter what you know about an itemyou want, and let the linker try to find it for you. Uni of Adelaide Community only

University of Adelaide Library Essay and thesis writing style guides Books and links on style and citation. Compiled by Reference Librarian Jennifer Osborn

Uni of Adelaide Theses: How to find them Guidelines on finding Uni of Adelaide, other Australian and overseas theses. By Bernadine Hardin Research Librarian for Commerce.

Library Services

Reciprocal borrowing From Flinders and Uni of SA
Document Delivery Interlibrary requests, both Normal and Fast Track. The Document Delivery service includes an electronic request form.
Document Delivery for students and staff in teaching hospitals

Contacts

Maureen Bell Research Librarian for Clinical Nursing, Psychiatry, Psychology, and Public Health.
'phone 83 03 52 14

Mick Draper Research Librarian for Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Anatomical Sciences, Clinical & Experimental Pharmacology, Dentistry, General Practice, Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Orthopaedics, Paediatrics, Pathology, and Surgery.
'phone 83 03 53 35

Email to compiler: Mick Draper