Databases
- PubMed* This link opens in a new window
Contains more than 35 million citations and abstracts for biomedical and life sciences literature.
PubMed links to full-text when they are available.
- MeSH DatabasesPubMed- Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Databases.
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
Contains over 25% of the world's science, technology and medicine full text and bibliographic information.
Grey Literature
Literature/reports published outside of traditional commercial publishing. This can include government reports, conference proceedings, graduate dissertations, unpublished clinical trials, etc.
~Chapter 4.3.5 of Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
- Think about who is interested in your topic and where they might talk. For example, If government agencies = look for government reports, and think about professional associations à their conferences = conference papers.
Example of Search Strategy
- Here is an example of a compressive search strategyTopic: Focus on the oral health of children and young people in the foster care system.
Foster care and oral health search strategy.
Boolean Searching Commands
| AND |
Retrieve sources with both words. |
| OR |
The database will retrieve sources with either word. |
| NOT |
Excludes a keyword from your search. |
| ( ) | Combines OR groups. This is called “nesting.” (pediatric OR child OR adolescent) AND obesity |
| " " | Connect Phrases. “head injury” |
| * |
Truncate to allow for multiple variations on the end of a word stem. Intubat* = intubation, intubating, intubate |