Literature Searching Sites
Databases
Biomed Central - publishes a wide range of open access ejournals
BMJ Specialties - news and articles from the BMJ relating to specific topics
EMCDDA best practice portal - European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, range of resources covering drug related prevention, treatment, harm reduction and social re-integration.
eMedicine Special Topics - US-based evidence-based resources related to medical conditions
Epistemonikos - database of health evidence, including primary studies, systematic reviews and structured summaries
Health Systems Evidence - from McMaster University, database of research regarding governance, finance, delivery and implementation strategies in healthcare systems
Medline Plus Topics - US-based website from the National Institutes of Health, presenting health-related information in an easy accessible format
Pubmed - Provided by the National Library of Medicine, provides free and simple access to abstracts in healthcare and science-related topics
Rehabdata - National Rehabilitation Information Centre literature database
Social Care Online - abstracts of relevant social work and social care literature from a wide range of resources
TRIP - clinical search tool providing access to high quality clinical evidence
Reviews
BestBets – Best Evidence Topics, provides answers to very specific clinical problems, using the best available evidence
Campbell Collaboration - an international research network that produces systematic reviews of the effects of social interventions in Crime & Justice, Education, International Development, and Social Welfare
Centre for reviews and dissemination (CRD) - Collection of 3 high quality databases including DARE (effects of interventions used in health and social care), NHS EED (quality assessed economic evaluations) and HTA (health technology assessments). DARE & NHS EED will not be updated after 31st March 2015
Cochrane Library- high quality evidence in healthcare topics
Epistemonikos - database of health evidence, including systematic reviews and structured summaries; provides interconnects between the articles retrieved
NHS Evidence - search engine allowing users to search across a wide range of accredited resources
NICE - national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health
NIHR Dissemination Centre - summaries of the latest research, including commentaries and insight into relevance for healthcare professionals and patients
Occupational Therapy CATS - contains CATs (critically appraised topics) and CAPs (critically appraised papers) focussing on occupational therapy interventions
OTseeker - contains abstracts of systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials relevant to occupational therapy. Trials have been critically appraised and rated to help you to evaluate their validity and interpretability
Pedro - bibliographic details and abstracts of randomised controlled trials and systematic reviews in physiotherapy. Most trials on the database have been rated for quality to help you quickly discriminate between trials that are likely to be valid and interpretable and those that are not
PROSPERO - international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews in health and social care, from the University of York, Centre for Reviews and Dissemination
TRIP - clinical search tool providing access to high quality clinical evidence
Guidelines
Clinical Knowledge Summaries - evidence-based guidelines aimed at primary care staff
Guidelines - summarised clinical guidelines (site from MPG, contains adverts)
Guidelines in Practice - evidence-based clinical content and educational articles for UK healthcare profeesionals. Free registration may be required to access some content. (site from MPG, contains adverts)
NICE - National guidelines
Royal College of Physicians guidelines - resources including clinical guidelines
SIGN - Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network
Reports
Department of Health - Policies, frameworks, regulations, bulletins, statistics
Joseph Rowntree Foundation – an endowed charity that funds a large, UK-wide research and development programme, including health-related topics
King’s Fund – a charitable organisation seeking to understand how the health system in England can be improved and working to impact on policy, services and behaviour change
Clinical trials
AllTrials.net - campaign calling for all clinical trial data to be published
ClinicalTrials.gov – US-based registry of federally and privately supported clinical trials conducted in the United States and around the world.
Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials
Current controlled trials - features two clinical trial resources. ISRCTN Register is a database of randomised controlled trials with an International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN). metaRegister of Controlled Trials (mRCT) is an international database combining registers of ongoing randomised controlled trials in all areas of healthcare
EU Clinical Trials Register - search for ongoing trials
EU Trials Tracker - tracking of clinical trials on the EU clinical trial register and whether their results are being reported
FDAAA Trials Tracker - tracking of US recorded clinical trials which have not published their results
ISRCTN - a simple numeric system for the unique identification of randomised controlled trials worldwide. The ISRCTN Register also accepts registration of other forms of studies designed to assess the efficacy of health-care interventions
Trials Journal - open access, peer-reviewed, online journal that will encompass all aspects of the performance and findings of randomized controlled trials
UK Clinical Trials Gateway - search for ongoing trials
WHO International clinical trial search portal - covers trials registered from a range of countries
Theses
EthOS - The British Library run Electronic Thesis Online Service (EthOS) provides free electronic access to all UK Higher Education Institutional theses.
Index to Theses - a listing of theses with abstracts accepted for higher degrees by universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations - Details of theses and dissertations from universities in the U.S. and worldwide can be searched and browsed, and in some cases links to the online full text are provided. This resource is not comprehensive.
OATD (Open Access Theses and Dissertations) – search for theses and dissertations available in full-text.
Search engines
NHS Evidence - Guidelines, reports and reviews published by accredited sources.
Google Scholar - Google search engine restricted to scholarly items in a wide range of subjects. This is often most useful if you are looking for details of a complete citation or for freely available full-text articles.
MedNar – medically-focused search engine.
Grey literature
Grey Literature refers to non-traditional sources of information and may include: reports, leaflets, bulletins, dissertations etc. These sources of information may not be published through the traditional route and may not be available within typical bibliographic databases.
Please check the other tabs above for sources of grey literature as well as the links below:
OpenGrey – multi-disciplinary European database, providing references to technical or research reports, doctoral dissertations, conference papers and other grey literature.
BASE (Bielefeld Academy Search Engine) – search engine for over 100 million academic documents.
British Library – wide range of material held, use the filter options to focus your search.
CADTH (Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health) – independent, not for profit Canadian-based organisation, providing evidence to support healthcare decisions.
CASH (Current Awareness Service for Health) – browsable topics of the latest news around a range of topics.
King’s Fund – reports, bulletins, blogs and news items, based on healthcare topics.
Nuffield Trust – reports, research, news and policy analysis from this independent healthcare charity.
Open access
Open Access content is normally content that is available without the need for the reader to purchase it or log in. Open access content can include complete journals or individual articles.
BioMed Central - open access publisher
BMJ Open - open access publication
Core (Connecting Repositories) – searchable database of open access research papers.
DOAJ (Directoy of Open Access Journals) – multi-disciplinary list of open access journal titles
OAIster – catalogue of open access resources, harvested from library collections.
Open Access Journals at Elsevier - list of open access journal titles
OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories) – search range of academic repositories for open access articles.
PLOS Medicine - open access publisher
Science Open - searchable directory of open access articles
Books
Our book collection can help you to develop your literature searching skills: try searching for subjects:
- Medical Literature
- Research
- Internet Search
- Information Resources
- Medical Informatics
- Evidence-based Medicine
- Evidence-based Nursing