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Health & Biomedical Research: Getting Started

Best Practices

Database Searching

Databases should be searched using search strategies (a.k.a., search strings).  These strategies are a combination of search terms and Boolean operators.  Search terms can can be represented by keywords or subject headings.  

Keywords describe a research topic/question in natural language.  Identify words that describe the core concepts of the topic/question, and connect those words with Boolean operators ⇒ COVID-19 AND hand washing AND children

Databases use Subject headings to describe and organize sources, and facilitate searching.  *Look for a "Subjects" or "Thesaurus" link in a database to reveal its list of subject headings.  Like keywords, connect these subject headings with Boolean operators ⇒ COVID-19 AND Hand Disinfection AND Hospitals

*In PubMed, subject headings can be identified using the MeSH Database.  

Health & Biomedical Databases

PubMed PubMed comprises over 35 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. PubMed citations and abstracts include the fields of biomedicine and health, covering portions of the life sciences, behavioral sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering.
CINAHL

CINAHL is the definitive research tool for nursing and allied health professionals. 
Embase EMBASE is an international biomedical and pharmacological database that provides access to up-to-date information about medical and drug-related subjects.
Web of Science Web of Science includes research articles, reviews, editorials, conference proceedings and abstracts covering biological sciences, medical and life sciences, physical and chemical sciences, agriculture, veterinary sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.
Scopus Scopus is a citation and abstract database containing peer-reviewed literature, with over 46 million records and 4.8 million conference papers from proceedings and journals. It covers the medical, scientific, technical and social sciences fields. 
PsycINFO PsychInfo provides citations to the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences. 

Boolean Operators

In database searching, Boolean operators are the words AND, OR, and NOT.  These words/operators act as commands and tell the database how to perform a search.

AND

Searches for items with all words

OR

Searches for items with any of the words

NOT

Excludes items with the specified word
Nesting

Place parentheses around terms connected with OR. Nesting words within parentheses tells the database to process the words as part of the overall search. The absence of parentheses around groups of synonyms and similar concepts disconnects the words from the search equation, and searches for the words separately.

coronavirus AND inhalation OR deposition

Searches for items with coronavirus and inhalation, and items with deposition

coronavirus AND (inhalation OR deposition)

Search for items with coronavirus and inhalation and items with coronavirus and deposition

Searching PubMed

Search for citations on a topic using keywords. Keywords describe the most important concepts of a topic. Scientific names are not required; do not use articles, punctuations, or a question format. For more in-depth help and examples, see our PubMed 2.0 Guide. 

PubMed & Peer-Review

There is no way to limit search results to peer-reviewed articles in PubMed, but users can limit searches to the MEDLINE subset of PubMed.  The majority of the publications in MEDLINE are scholarly (i.e., peer-reviewed).  Beware, though, there is a small number of newspapers, magazines, and newsletters included in MEDLINE that are not scholarly in nature.  

  1. Go to PubMed 

  2. Enter search terms

  3. On search results page > Click Additional filters button

  4. Select Journal > Mark MEDLINE box > Click Show button

  5. On search results page > Mark MEDLINE box