Databases for Medical Research
This is a list of databases and resources for medical research. Alternatively, see:
- Short list of key databases for medical research
- Complete list of databases available through Northeastern
- AgeLine (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowAgeLine focuses on those aged 50+ and the literature of social gerontology. Covers aging-related content from the health sciences, psychology, sociology, social work, economics, and public policy.
- What this includes: over 600 journals, books, book chapters, reports, dissertations, consumer guides, and educational videos..
- Alt-HealthWatch (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowInternational, and often peer-reviewed journals and reports on complementary, holistic and integrated approaches to health care and wellness.
- What this includes: Articles, pamplets, reports, book excerpts
- BioMed Central This link opens in a new windowAn independent online publishing house; provides immediate free access to the peer-reviewed biological and medical research. Northeastern's membership reduces article-processing charges for Northeastern-affiliated authors who publish with BMC journals.
- CINAHL Ultimate (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowCitations and abstracts of scholarly, peer-reviewed articles and professional association news and information for thousands of publications. Covers nursing and 17 allied health disciplines, going as far back as 1937. Links to PDFs or full text for Northeastern-subscribed journals.
- Embase (Elsevier) This link opens in a new windowAn up-to-date biomedical research database covering the most important international biomedical literature from 1947 to the present day. Structured and natural language searching.
- Natural Medicines This link opens in a new windowHigh quality, evidence-based information about complementary and alternative therapies.
- PsycInfo (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowAmerican Psychological Associations flagship PsycINFO database includes citations and abstracts of peer reviewed articles, books, and dissertations. Coverage from 1888 to the present. Full text links for Northeastern-subscribed materials.
- PubMed (NU customized) This link opens in a new windowA comprehensive source of journal literature in the life sciences and biomedicine from the National Library of Medicine. Includes selected full text from PubMed Central, and NCBI Bookshelf. PubMed is a free web resource, however this version contains links to Northeastern-subscribed journals that require a login.
- ScienceDirect Books and Journals (Elsevier) This link opens in a new windowAccess to Elsevier ebooks and select scholarly journals covering biomedical science and medicine, pharmacology, neuroscience, psychology, social sciences and more.
- Social Sciences Premium Collection (Proquest) This link opens in a new windowScholarly and professional citations and abstracts with full text links in politics and public policy, sociology, social services, anthropology, criminology, linguistics, information sciences and education. Professional society databases included.
- Web of Science, Core Collection 1975-present This link opens in a new windowUse for citation tracking, finding seminal literature, data visualizations, author alerts, institutional affiliations, and impact factors. LInks to full text for Northeastern-subscribed journals.
- Wiley Online Library This link opens in a new windowAccess to more than 1,500 full-text journals and 22,000 ebooks as well as the Cochrane Library and reviews of literature in the sciences.
- medRxivmedRxiv is a free onlline archive of complete but unpublished manuscripts in the medical, clinical and related health sciences. med Rxiv facilitates early dissemination of new findings by allowing researchers to share manuscripts before they are peer-reviewed and published in academic journals. Hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Yale University.
- PloS MedicinePublished by the Public Library of Science, PLOS Medicine is an open access and pper-reviewed journal that publishes articles of general interest on biomedical, environmental, social and political determinants of health. The journal emphasizes work that advances clinical practice, health policy or pathophysiological understanding to benefit health in a variety of settings.
Supplemental Search Tools
There are many additional tools available for searching the literature. The tools mentioned below can be valuable in surfacing relevant literature. However, one must keep in mind: many of these tools are built on open access published literature (papers which are not behind paywalls). Search tools which rely only or primarily on open access literature may give an incomplete view of existing research.
Consider these tools to be additional strategies, rather than replacements for "gold standard" databases such as PubMed.
Semantic Scholar
Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered search and discovery tool. It uses machine learning techniques to extract meaning and identify connections from within papers. Its corpus of papers is considerable, but not comprehensive. Semantic Scholar sources papers from open access journals and a variety of publishing partners. One unique feature of Semantic Scholar is 'Research Feeds', which are an adaptive research recommender that uses AI to quickly learn what papers you care about reading and recommends the latest research to help you stay up to date.
Elicit
When using Elicit, you write your query as a question, and Elicit outputs relevant articles and summarizes key information from the articles. Elicit relies on the same language models which underwrite ChatGPT, with additional models and algorithms unique to Elicit. For its corpus of articles, Elicit relies on Semantic Scholar. Elicit operates on a ‘freemium’ model. So as a free user, one will have a limit on how many times you can search, and you will not have access to every feature by default. That said, even in its free version, one may find Elicit to be useful when reviewing the literature.
Scite.ai
Scite.ai is an AI-assisted tool for discovering, contextualizing, and understanding research. Northeastern University Library just recently subscribed to Scite.ai in May 2024. Scite uses deep learning algorithms and natural language processing techniques to analyze the text and citation metadata of scientific papers. Scite's Smart Citations describe the context of individual citations, both where in the article the citation occurs and whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. Scite included a variety of tools including a browser extension, custom dashboards, PDF uploader, and search. Learn more about how Scite was built in this MIT Press article.
Research Rabbit
Research Rabbit is a freely available citation-based literature mapping tool. It uses ‘seed papers’ to locate additional relevant literature via citation and collaboration networks. Read an in-depth review of Research Rabbit. PDF overview and brief tutorial from James Cook University.
LitMaps
LitMaps is another citation-based literature mapping tool, which operates on a 'freemium' model. Like Research Rabbit and Connected Papers, LitMaps uses ‘seed papers’ to locate additional relevant literature via citation and collaboration networks. LitMaps' database uses open access metadata from Semantic Scholar, CrossRef, and OpenAlex.
Connected Papers
Connected Papers is another citation-based literature mapping tool which operates on a 'freemium' model. Like LitMaps and Research Rabbit, LitMaps uses ‘seed papers’ to locate additional relevant literature via citation and collaboration networks. Connected Papers uses the Semantic Scholar database for its corpus. Learn more about Connected Papers.
Undermind.ai
Undermind is an AI-powered search engine for research articles. As of April 2024, Undermind is offering a promotion free tier for individuals. It is likely to transition to a paid model in the future. For more information, read Undermind's White Paper, as well as a review by data services librarian, Aaron Tay. At the time of the publication of the White Paper, Undermind searched ArXiv, the preprint archive. As of April 2024, it now searches Semantic Scholar's corpus of over 200 million published research articles.
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