Below are some keywords and keyword combinations that might be useful in searching article databases. Please note that the asterisk (*) denotes a wildcard search, which will look for all words starting with the characters before the asterisk (*). For example: gene* = gene, genes, genetic, etc.
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CINAHL is a primary database for nursing and allied health students and professionals.
Getting to CINAHL
PubMed is the National Library of Medicine’s web interface for searching the MEDLINE database as well as other related citations. MEDLINE contains citations and abstracts to the world’s literature in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, public health, allied health, health administration, and the pre-clinical sciences.
Getting to PubMed
Use the videos below to help begin your search in PubMed, or check out our PubMed tutorial guide. As always, contact your librarian to schedule an appointment for a one-on-one PubMed searching consultation.
Contains abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, and is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. It also includes information about the psychological aspects of related fields such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, technology, linguistics, anthropology, business, law, and others.
Getting to PsycINFO
Broad coverage of high quality journals in many natural and social sciences, inclusion of meeting abstracts and pre-publication articles, and the ability to search full-text are among the special features of this resource.
Getting to ScienceDirect
Largest citation database in science, engineering, medicine and technology; also the social sciences, arts and humanities are represented.
Getting to Web of Science
A multi-disciplinary database providing full-text for nearly 12,000 total publications and indexing and abstracting for more than 16,000 publications. Coverage spans every area of academic study and general interest subject areas. In addition, the database contains more than 84,000 biographies, 86,000 primary source documents, 10,000 company profiles and an image collection of more than 107,000 photos, maps and flags. MegaFILE is comprised of EBSCO's Academic Search Premiere, Business Source Premiere, MasterFILE Premiere, and Regional Business News databases.
Getting to EBSCOMegaFile
Additional databases which may benefit your studies:
When searching databases, take time to design your search strategy thoroughly.
Focus on one concept at a time; list your main idea for concept #1 along with synonyms, abbreviations, and alternate spellings. Everything in Concept 1 should use the OR boolean. Do the same thing for your other concepts.
Use the AND boolean to combine your concepts together.
Using a Venn Diagram can be useful in your search strategy design:
Additional searching tips:
* (asterisk) - Most databases recognize this as a truncation tool. Use it to truncate your word and search a variation of the words. For example: smok* will search for smoke, smokes, smoking, smokers, smokeless, etc.
" " (quotations) - Most databases will search your words as a phrase when they are placed in quotation marks. For example, a database will search for the words alcohol and addiction together when they are placed in quotations, like this "alcohol addiction". If you search for alcohol addiction without the quotation marks, the database will search for the words alcohol and addiction, but they won't be next to each other. In other words, the paper you find may be about alcohol in one paragraph and addiction [of any kind] in another paragraph.
Here's a video from B.D. Owens Library (Northwest Missouri State University) to help explain boolean operators, asterisks, and quotation marks: