LibGuides: Medicine: Journals & Databases

Key biomedical subject headings databases

These databases can use Subject Headings (e.g. MeSH, Emtree) to assist your searching. They can also be searched with keywords.

Ovid Collection (subscribed resource)
Ovid is a platform that includes a number of databases that cover medicine, pharmacy, psychology, education, food science and technology.
MEDLINE (via Ovid; subscribed resource)
Ovid MEDLINE® covers the international literature on biomedicine, including the allied health fields and the biological and physical sciences, humanities, and information science as they relate to medicine and health care. Information is indexed from approximately 5,600 journals published world-wide. Coverage from 1946 onwards.
PubMed (open access)
PubMed comprises more than 27 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. Everything that is in MEDLINE is in PubMed.
EMBASE (via Ovid; subscribed resource)
Embase (Excerpta Medica Database) is a biomedical and pharmacological database containing more than 30 million records including articles from more than 8,500 journals published world-wide. It has major strengths in pharmacy and psychiatry. Coverage from 1947 onwards.
Emcare (via Ovid, subscribed resource)
The Emcare database covers all nursing specialties and nursing healthcare professions. It includes international coverage of allied health, education and training, development and management, midwifery, health and healthcare economics, clinical medical and healthcare social work, psychiatry and mental health, and traumatology, emergency and critical-care medicine.
CINAHL (subscribed resource)
An authoritative resource for nursing and allied health professionals, students, educators and researchers. This database provides indexing for more than 2,900 journals back to 1981 from the fields of nursing and allied health.
PsycINFO (via Ovid; subscribed resource)
PsycINFO® is a database providing citations to the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences. The database includes material of relevance to psychologists and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, neuroscience, medicine, and social work. Updated weekly, PsycINFO® provides access to journal articles, books, chapters, and dissertations. Coverage from 1806 onwards.
Cochrane Library (open access NZ-wide)
The Cochrane Library is a collection of three resources (CDSR, Central and Clinical Answers) that contain high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making.
Cochrane Library (as EBM Reviews via Ovid; subscribed resource)
EBM Reviews includes the Cochrane Library and ACP Journal Club. Select one of the seven databases to search, or search across all seven. Note that Methodology Register, DARE, HTA and EED are no longer updated.
Global Health (via Ovid, subscribed resource)
Global Health brings together two databases: the Public Health and Tropical Medicine (PHTM) database, previously produced by the Bureau of Hygiene and Tropical Diseases (BHTD), and the human health and diseases information extracted from CAB ABSTRACTS. Dating back to 1973, together they provide a unique resource which offers deep subject coverage of information related to human health and communicable diseases. Global Health provides an alternative, complementary point of reference with a broad analysis of foreign language journals, books, research reports, patents and standards, dissertations, conference proceedings, annual reports, public health, developing country information, and other difficult to obtain material. The Global Health database covers the following aspects of human health and disease: communicable diseases, tropical diseases, parasitic diseases and parasitology - medical entomology, human nutrition, community and public health, and, medicinal and poisonous plants. Access also provided to the Global Health Archive from 1910.

Keyword-only Citation databases

These databases can only be searched using keywords (author words).

If you find a great article on your topic, you can use these citation databases to track down articles that cite that particular article.

Web of Science All Databases (Subscribed resource)
Access the world’s leading scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities and examine proceedings of international conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions. About 13,000 titles are included. Coverage from 1900-present.
Scopus (subscribed resource)
Scopus is a very large abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, including journals, books and conference proceedings. It covers over 23,000 titles in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities, Though it includes much older content, it reliably covers from 1970-present.
Google Scholar (open access)
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.

Other biomedical resources

Acland's Video Atlas of Human Anatomy This link opens in a new window
Acland’s Video Atlas of Human Anatomy presents more than 300, 3D rotational gross anatomy videos featuring real cadaver specimens. The specimens have not been embalmed and therefore retain the colour, texture and mobility of the living body.

What is Article Link?

Article Link links article databases to the Library's e-journal collections. It tells you whether (and where) the full-text of an article is available.

You may see Article Link represented as: or Otago Article Link.

Covid Information

LitCovid is a National Library of Medicine literature hub for tracking up-to-date scientific information about the 2019 novel Coronavirus (CoVid-19).

LitCovid is the most comprehensive resource on the subject, providing a central access to over 380,000 (and growing) relevant articles in PubMed. The articles are updated daily and are further categorized by different research topics (e.g. transmission) and geographic locations.

LibWizard Tutorials

These tutorials are designed to provide a basic introduction to searching the databases.

Help with PubMed

Find out how to get the most out of PubMed by using the tutorials below:

PubMed Online Training
Tutorials from the U.S. National Library of Medicine

PubMed Guide
A quick and easy guide to getting the most out of your PubMed searches

Key clinical resources

These are just some key databases relevant to searching for clinical information:

BMJ Best Practice This link opens in a new window
A clinical decision support tool for health professionals that provides access to the latest research evidence, guidelines and expert opinion in a single source. BMJ Best Practice includes differential diagnosis tables, treatment algorithms, videos of common clinical procedures, integrated evidence from Cochrane Clinical Answers, over 250 medical calculators and more.
DynaMed This link opens in a new window
A clinical reference tool that represents the best available evidence drawn from medical journals and systematic evidence review databases. The content is written by a world-class team of physicians who synthesize the evidence and provide objective analysis. New information is integrated into existing content daily.
AccessMedicine This link opens in a new window
AccessMedicine includes 130+ books and other resources including drug monographs, case studies, multimedia and study aids from the major health publisher McGraw-Hill. Included among the books are Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine and Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment.
AccessMedicine: John Murtagh's General Practice Collection This link opens in a new window
John Murtagh’s General Practice Collection comprises a range of resources on general practice and primary health care, including Murtagh’s General Practice textbook (7e).
AccessMedicine: Clinical Sports Medicine Collection This link opens in a new window
The Clinical Sports Medicine Collection includes instructional videos demonstrating anatomy and the assessment, treatment and rehabilitation of injuries. The collection also includes access to Brukner & Khan’s Clinical Sports Medicine textbook.
AccessNeurology This link opens in a new window
AccessNeurology provides access to authoritative, trusted, and current information on neurology and neuroscience reference, research, and teaching.
ClinicalKey This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive access to entire the Elsevier medical and surgical library of content: over 1200 books, 600 journals, thousands of videos and millions of images.

ClinicalKey Clinical Overviews (subscribed resource)
These provide easy-to-scan, actionable information for clinicians on diagnosis, treatment, monitoring, screening, and prevention of diseases and conditions.
Orthobullets
Orthobullets is a free US educational resource for medical students and orthopaedic surgeons, designed to improve education through the communal efforts of those who use it as a learning resource. Content is divided into 'communities': preclinical and clinical medical students and orthopaedic surgical trainees.

UpToDate

The University's subscription to UpToDate ceased on 30th September 2018. Trainee Interns (6th year medical students) will be able to access UpToDate through the hospital network.

Looking for a known article?

Request a FREE Copy with the Interloans service

If you need an item that is not available via a database that the University of Otago subscribes to, or in print form in the library, request a free copy using the Interloan service:

Interloans service
The Interloans service enables library users to search for items, create requests for items not held in the University of Otago Library, and monitor the progress of those requests.

Medicine: Journals & Databases

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