literature research databases

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The top list of academic research databases

2. Web of Science

5. ieee xplore, 6. sciencedirect, 7. directory of open access journals (doaj), get the most out of your academic research database, frequently asked questions about academic research databases, related articles.

Whether you are writing a thesis , dissertation, or research paper it is a key task to survey prior literature and research findings. More likely than not, you will be looking for trusted resources, most likely peer-reviewed research articles.

Academic research databases make it easy to locate the literature you are looking for. We have compiled the top list of trusted academic resources to help you get started with your research:

Scopus is one of the two big commercial, bibliographic databases that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline. Besides searching for research articles, Scopus also provides academic journal rankings, author profiles, and an h-index calculator .

• Coverage: 90.6 million core records
• References: N/A
• Discipline: Multidisciplinary
• Access options: Limited free preview, full access by institutional subscription only
• Provider: Elsevier

Web of Science also known as Web of Knowledge is the second big bibliographic database. Usually, academic institutions provide either access to Web of Science or Scopus on their campus network for free.

• Coverage: approx. 100 million items
• References: 1.4 billion
• Access options: institutional subscription only
• Provider: Clarivate (formerly Thomson Reuters)

PubMed is the number one resource for anyone looking for literature in medicine or biological sciences. PubMed stores abstracts and bibliographic details of more than 30 million papers and provides full text links to the publisher sites or links to the free PDF on PubMed Central (PMC) .

• Coverage: approx. 35 million items
• Discipline: Medicine and Biological Sciences
• Access options: free
• Provider: NIH

For education sciences, ERIC is the number one destination. ERIC stands for Education Resources Information Center, and is a database that specifically hosts education-related literature.

• Coverage: approx. 1.6 million items
• Discipline: Education
• Provider: U.S. Department of Education

IEEE Xplore is the leading academic database in the field of engineering and computer science. It's not only journal articles, but also conference papers, standards and books that can be search for.

• Coverage: approx. 6 million items
• Discipline: Engineering
• Provider: IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

ScienceDirect is the gateway to the millions of academic articles published by Elsevier, 1.4 million of which are open access. Journals and books can be searched via a single interface.

• Coverage: approx. 19.5 million items

The DOAJ is an open-access academic database that can be accessed and searched for free.

• Coverage: over 8 million records
• Provider: DOAJ

JSTOR is another great resource to find research papers. Any article published before 1924 in the United States is available for free and JSTOR also offers scholarships for independent researchers.

• Coverage: more than 12 million items
• Provider: ITHAKA

Start using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with PubMed and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

Scopus is one of the two big commercial, bibliographic databases that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline. Beside searching for research articles, Scopus also provides academic journal rankings, author profiles, and an h-index calculator .

PubMed is the number one resource for anyone looking for literature in medicine or biological sciences. PubMed stores abstracts and bibliographic details of more than 30 million papers and provides full text links to the publisher sites or links to the free PDF on PubMed Central (PMC)

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Database List

Visit the Library's Database page for a full list of Literature Databases

• Gale Literature This link opens in a new window Cross-searches Literature Resource Center, LitFinder, and other Gale resources to provide context and critical analysis of major authors and their works.
• Gale Literary Index This link opens in a new window Gale Literary Index is a master index to the major literature products published by Gale. It combines and cross-references author names, including pseudonyms and variant names, and titles into one source.
• JSTOR This link opens in a new window Humanities, mathematics, science, and social science scholarly journals. Coverage starts at the beginning year of publication and includes all but the most recent years. UNF has access to following collections: Arts & Sciences Collections I - XV, and Life Sciences.
• Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window Biographies, bibliographies and critical analysis of the work of authors from every age and literary discipline.
• LitFinder This link opens in a new window Provides access to literary works and authors throughout history and includes full-text poems and poetry citations, as well as short stories, speeches, and plays. The database also includes secondary materials like biographies, images, and more.
• MLA International Bibliography with Full Text This link opens in a new window Scholarly articles, journals, books and dissertations covering topics in literature, modern languages, linguistics, folklore, and dramatic arts as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing.
• Project MUSE This link opens in a new window Journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window Longstanding English dictionary, including word origins and an historical thesaurus.
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About Scopus

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Delivering a comprehensive overview of the world's research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities, Scopus features smart tools to track, analyse and visualise research.

As research becomes increasingly global, interdisciplinary and collaborative, you can make sure that critical research from around the world is not missed when you choose Scopus.

“Speed is very important … I can easily identify what I need to know, read it, digest it and move on to the next one.” James, Research Pathologist, Medical Device R&D, Scopus user

“Scopus is very customer-friendly… You get more information from all different fields. It saves a lot of time.” Chris, Head of R&D, Diagnostic Testing, Scopus user

“Scopus informs every phase of the editorial process. I would not want to do this job without it, and I intend to continue using it throughout my career.” William, Professor of Economics, University of Tennessee

More information (in English)

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Databases: Literature: Literature Databases

• Literature Databases
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Core Resources

• MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window Covers journal articles, books and dissertations. Produced by the Modern Language Association. Coverage is international and subjects include literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory & criticism, dramatic arts, as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing. Coverage of rhetoric and composition and the history, theory and practice of teaching language and literature. Simultaneous users: 7

Additional Resources

• Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window This academic multi-disciplinary database provides than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. In addition, it offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. Coverage spans virtually every area of academic study and offers information dating as far back as 1887.
• African American Periodicals, 1825-1995 This link opens in a new window This collection features more than 170 wide-ranging periodicals by and about African Americans. Published in 26 states, the publications include academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations bulletins, annual reports and other genres.
• ARTFL (American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language) This link opens in a new window Access to databases containing the full-text of a broad range of significant books, texts, bibliographies and other works supporting the study of French language and literature.
• Arts & Humanities Citation Index This link opens in a new window Covers the scholarly journal literature in the arts and humanities. Full indexing of 1,144 leading arts and humanities journals, and of selected relevant items from over 6,800 major science and social science journals.
• Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window A multi-faceted resource that includes: The Chicago Defender, 1909-1975, an influential historical African American newspaper; International Index to Black Periodicals, coverage from 1902 onward; Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience-- Topical overviews by leading Black Studies scholars; Dissertations-- Full-text dissertations
• Cambridge Companions Complete Collection This link opens in a new window Cambridge Collections Online includes over 600 titles, updated regularly, with emphasis on literature, classics, religion, philosophy, and cultural studies.
• Dacheng pre-1949 journals full-text database (大成 老旧刊全文数据库) This link opens in a new window Consists of approximately 7,000 Chinese periodicals published from 1830 to 1949 in all fields of knowledge as well as popular journals. A unique and valuable source for the studies of Chinese politics, history, culture, society, philosophy, literature and arts in that period.
• Shakespeare Globe on Screen 1 & 2 (Drama Online) This link opens in a new window This portal provides access to Shakespeare Globe on Screen (2008 - 2015) and Shakespeare Globe on Screen 2 (2016 - 2018). The two collections altogether feature over 20 films recorded live on the Globe stage with leading actors. Plays include "Twelfth Night," "Merchant of Venice," "Macbeth," "Romeo and Juliet," "Othello," "Measure for Measure," and others.
• Duke University Press Journals This link opens in a new window A collection of nearly 40 online journals provided by Duke University Press, primarily in the arts and humanities.
• Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window Provides full-text and full-page-image access to books, pamphlets and broadsides printed in America from 1639-1800. Based on the renowned American Bibliography by Charles Evans (14 vols., 1903-34, 1955-59); and subsequent bibliographic works by Roger Bristol, James Mooney and Clifford Shipton. Includes more than 36,000 printed works and 2.3 million pages.
• Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 This link opens in a new window Provides full-text and full-page-image access to books, pamphlets, and broadsides published in America in the early part of the 19th century. Based on the noted “American Bibliography, 1801-1819” by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker, offers more than four million pages from over 36,000 items. Complements Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800.
• Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window EEBO contains over 100,000 books published in English since 1475. Based on Pollard & Redgrave's "Short Title Catalogue (1475-1640)" and Wing's "Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700)," plus revised editions and supplements. Subjects covered include English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, math, and science. Update: Texts continue to be added to the online version as they are scanned from the microfilm.
• EEBO TCP (Text Creation Partnership) This link opens in a new window Contains some searchable and readable editions of Early English Books (texts published in English since 1475). Based on Pollard & Redgrave's "Short Title Catalogue (1475-1640)" and Wing's "Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700)," plus revised editions and supplements. Subjects covered include English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, math, and science. For more non-searchable full text of Early English Books, see EEBO.
• Empire Online This link opens in a new window Database will contain, when complete, over 60,000 images of original manuscripts and printed documents, enabling researchers to explore colonial history, politics, culture and society. Section I (now available) examines cultural contacts throughout five centuries of Empire, from Columbus to decolonization. It draws upon sources such as diaries and eyewitness accounts of European travelers, correspondence and periodical literature.
• English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) This link opens in a new window The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) indexes English or English-language letterpress materials published in Great Britain or its colonies or in English from 1473-1800, including Pollard and Redgrave (1473-1640), Wing (1640-1700), Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, and Evans' Early American Imprints, Series I (1639-1800). Materials indexed in ESTC may be available in Early English Books Online or Literature Online, or in the microform STC collection on Gelman's third floor.
• Gender Studies Database This link opens in a new window Gender-related scholarship inside and outside academia, combining Women's Studies International, Men's Studies and Sexual Diversity Studies and relevant contributions from the Child Development and Adolescent Studies and Family and Society Studies Worldwide databases.
• HarpWeek (Harper's Weekly: 1857-1877) This link opens in a new window Searchable page images from Harper's Weekly magazine for 1857-1877, the Civil War era through Reconstruction.
• Hispanic-American Periodicals Index (HAPI) This link opens in a new window HAPI is a multi-subject index to periodical literature on Latin America and on Hispanics in the United States.
• Index Translationum This link opens in a new window The Index Translationum, begun in 1932, is an international bibliography of book translations.
• International Medieval Bibliography This link opens in a new window Provides a comprehensive, current bibliography of articles in journals and miscellany volumes (conference proceedings, essay collections or Festschriften) covering Europe, North Africa and the New East (300-1500).
• JSTOR This link opens in a new window Back issues of core scholarly journals in subjects including African-American studies, anthropology, Asian studies, classics, ecology, economics, education, finance, history, literature, mathematics, philosophy, political science, population studies, sociology, and statistics. Includes free Early-Journal Content, journals published before 1923 in the U.S. and before 1870 outside of the U.S.
• Loeb Classical Library This link opens in a new window Full-text searchable digital editions of all volumes of the Loeb Classical Library currently in print, with new texts added biannually. Provides Greek and Latin text with facing English translations.
• Oxford Bibliographies Online: Literary and Critical Theory This link opens in a new window Database of interdisciplinary scholarly resources on Literary and Critical Theory. Contains current scholarship with original commentary and annotations.
• Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window Access to the definitive dictionary of the English language. Revisions and additions ongoing.
• Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window Historical (not current) coverage of thousands of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences, going back to Volume 1 for most titles (in some cases, over 200 years). Full-text articles are available from several hundred titles.
• Project Muse This link opens in a new window Articles and reviews from peer-reviewed, scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences.
• Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 This link opens in a new window Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 provides indexing of over three million articles from more than 550 leading magazines, including full coverage of the original print volumes of Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. This important resource offers a wide range of researchers access to information about history, culture and seminal developments across nearly a century.
• Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism This link opens in a new window Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism brings together a wealth of interdisciplinary content about the Modernist period, and is the ideal starting point for any research in modernism. With over 1,000 articles from experts in the field, supported by over 100 images, Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism is a vital tool for students and researchers. The content is fully cross-referenced, allowing for greater discoverability between fields, and covers eight key subject areas: Literature, Architecture, Visual Arts, Music, Dance, Theatre, Film, and Intellectual Currents. Researchers can browse by subject, movement, or place in order to discover connections between key topics and fields.
• Royal Shakespeare Live Collection (Drama Online) This link opens in a new window Drama Online: Royal Shakespeare Company Live Collection
• Taiwan Academic Classics This link opens in a new window Taiwan Academic Classics offers classic works from China/Taiwan and contemporary scholarly thought from academic societies in Taiwan and around the world. The federated search platform of Taiwan Academic Classics incorporates full text searchable Web access to core journals in the humanities and social sciences from 1928 to the present with ancient compilations from China's earliest Dynasties. Taiwan Academic Classics includes authoritative archives and historic documents from the era of the Chinese Republic. Taiwan Academic Classics integrates a total of 2 billion characters, 300 different journals, 6,630 ancient works and more than 100,000 dissertations, with contributions from 35,000 authors.
• Theatre in Video: Volumes I & II This link opens in a new window From celebrated productions of Shakespeare to rare, in-depth footage of the work of Samuel Beckett, the collection covers a wide range of 20th century theatre history. Interviews with directors, designers, writers, and actors, along with excerpts of live performances, deliver an authentic, behind-the-scenes look at hundreds of productions.
• Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) This link opens in a new window The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) is a research center at the University of California, Irvine. Founded in 1972, the TLG has already collected and digitized most literary texts written in Greek from Homer to the fall of Byzantium in 1453. Its goal is to create a comprehensive digital library of Greek literature from antiquity to the present. Includes digital versions of Greek texts, searchable in Greek, with links to English translations where available. ***Please note that the new system requires each user to create a user profile.***
• World Shakespeare Bibliography This link opens in a new window Citations to books, articles, book reviews, dissertations, theatrical productions, reviews of productions, audiovisual materials, electronic media, and other scholarly and popular materials related to Shakespeare. Includes international and non-English-language materials.

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Introduction to Journal Articles

Companions & reference, article databases, full-text databases, borges & shakespeare.

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Articles, especially those appearing in scholarly journals, are good sources of information for academic writing.

Many assignments require students to limit their search to scholarly or peer-reviewed articles. "Peer-reviewed," "scholarly," "academic," and "refereed" are often used interchangeably to describe manuscripts that undergo expert review before publication. Many academic databases. such as Ebsco Academic Search Complete and ProQuest Central, allow you to limit your search to scholarly or peer-reviewed journals.

Want to know more about peer review? Watch this short video on YouTube.

The Libraries have many additional articles that are suitable for research. Magazines, newspapers, and trade publications are often indexed along with scholarly journals in many databases.To include these types of materials in your search, don't select the option to limit to scholarly or peer-reviewed resources.

Want to know more about the difference between scholarly publications and popular magazines? Watch this brief video.

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Literature search databases

Best literature databases for researchers.

• Web of Science (WoS)
• Google Scholar
• Arxiv by Cornell
• Science Direct
• Directory of Open Journals (DOAJ)
• INSPIRE-Hep
• IEEE Xplore 

Literature Search

Literature search database is a set of databases that index many different academic journals with different disciplines and other types of literature such as books and conference papers. For conducting research, reviewing articles, or a book, it’s better to search through multiple academic databases which helps avoid publication bias.

Moreover, it provides researchers and students with trusted resources, most likely peer-reviewed research articles.

• Thus, this article provides some of the key databases and platforms recommended for most researchers. It also helps them to keep up to date on the latest research relevant to their topic area as it is published. A top list of most used academic research databases is covered by this blog, let’s explore it together.

A Comprehensive Guide to the Best Literature Databases for Researchers

Web of science (wos):.

• Web of Science (WoS) is one of the world’s leading multidiscipline bibliographic databases. It includes the highest impact and open-access journals and conference proceedings. Web of science covers 100+ million scientific articles in sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities disciplines.
• Moreover, recently academic institutions provide free access to the Web of Science and Scopus on their campus network. Web of Science is maintained by Clarivate Analytics. All journals are submitted to the core Web of Science databases to be evaluated and indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). The Emerging Sources Citation Index aims to extend the scope of publications in the Web of Science to include high-quality and peer-reviewed publications.
• In addition, Clarivate Analytics owns all three indexing databases in the web of science– SCI, SCIE, and ESCI. Web of Science indexes include the Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI).
• Thus, the journal indexed in the ESCI is discoverable on the Web of Science with full citation counts, author information, and other enrichment. Articles in ESCI-indexed will be included in an author’s  h -index calculation. The Hirsch index (H-index) is a distribution-based indicator of both productivity (number of papers) and impact (number of citations) in one number. Read more
• One of the biggest bibliographic databases that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline. Scopus is provided by Elsevier and covers 71+ million scholarly items.
• In addition to, searching for research articles, Scopus also provides academic journal rankings, author profiles, and an h-index calculator. Scopus allows full access by institutional subscription only.
• Moreover, Scopus searching allows access to authoritative research, identifies experts, and provides access to reliable data, metrics, and analytical tools.  It increases the visibility of publications and allows a better representation of scholarly output, the validity of profiles, citations, and h-index scores. Read more

Google Scholar:

• Google Scholar is another database, good for conducting simple searches for scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts, and articles.
• Google Scholar is a free academic search engine, that searches all the indexed information on the web, it searches repositories of publishers, universities, or scholarly websites. Additionally, advanced Scholar search provides additional search fields such as author, publication, and date, as well as phrase matching and word exclusion. It also provides a check for citing publications and graph citations over time. Read more

Arxiv by Cornell:

• Arxiv by Cornell is an open access to scholarly articles around the world in vast fields including physics, math, and computer science with their subdisciplines including statistics, electrical engineering, quantitative biology, and economics. Moreover, Arxiv is an archive for electronic preprints of scientific papers and is not peer-reviewed. Read more

Ulrichsweb:

• Ulrichsweb is a database that contains bibliographic detailed information on more than 300,000 periodicals (also called serials) of all types: academic and scholarly journals, e-journals, peer-reviewed titles, popular magazines, newsletters, newspapers, and more. Additionally, Ulrich’s is a user-friendly searching provides serials knowledge for researchers and librarians offering records information such as ISSN, publisher, language, subject, abstracting & indexing coverage, full-text database coverage, tables of contents, and reviews. Read more

Science Direct:

• Science Direct is a most important peer-reviewed academic literature platform which provides subscription-based access to a large database of scientific and medical research. Moreover, it contains the world’s largest collection of full-text and bibliographic information on science, technology, and medicine also many articles and journals on the humanities and social sciences.
• Additionally, Science Direct is one of the subsidiaries of Elsevier. Article abstracts are freely available, but access to their full texts generally requires a pay-per-view purchase. Articles published with open access are peer-reviewed and freely available to read and download. Read more

Directory of Open Journals (DOAJ):

• DOAJ is a unique and extensive index of diverse open-access journals covering all scientific and scholarly subjects. DOAJ is a community-curated online directory where all the articles indexed are open-access, peer-reviewed, and can be accessed free of charge. Read more
• JSTOR is an archive of articles from scholarly journals and primary sources for disciplines such as arts, sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Read more

Social Sciences Databases

• SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) is a bibliographic database and cooperative electronic publishing model of open-access journals. Besides, SciELO was created to meet the scientific communication needs of developing countries and provides an efficient way to increase visibility and access to scientific literature. SciELO Citation Index helps researchers make a broader research connection. Read more
• The Education Resources Information Center is an online digital library of educational research and information, sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. ERIC is an authoritative database of indexed and full-text education literature and resources. Also, it is an essential tool for education researchers of all kinds. Moreover, it includes records for a variety of source types, including books, journal articles, conference papers, dissertations, curriculum guides, and policy papers. Read more

Medical Databases

• iCite is a tool to access a dashboard of bibliometric information for journal articles that have been included in the PubMed database. Moreover, citation data are drawn from PubMed Central, European PubMed Central, CrossRef, and Web of Science. Read more
• PubMed is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine. In addition, PubMed stores abstracts and bibliographic details of more than 30 million papers and provides full-text links to the publisher sites or links to the free PDF. Read more

Engineering Databases

INSPIRE-Hep:

• INSPIRE-HEP is an open-access digital platform for high-energy physics literature. Moreover, INSPIRE-HEP offers open access to high-energy physics-related articles, including journal papers, e-prints, preprints, technical reports, conference papers, and theses. Read more

IEEE Xplore  

• IEEE Xplore is a research database that provides access to journal articles, conference proceedings, technical standards, and related materials on computer science, electrical engineering and electronics, and allied fields. 
• In addition, IEEE provides a wide range of quality publications that allow the exchange of technical knowledge and information among technology professionals. IEEE fields include electrical engineering, computing, biotechnology, telecommunications, power and energy, and dozens of other technologies. However, access to IEEE Xplore is organizational. Read more

IMechE        

• The Institution of Mechanical Engineers is an archive that covers all aspects of mechanical engineering. This database includes technical papers, obituaries, works visits, technical drawings, meeting reports, and editorial comments, all covering some of the most influential and innovative years of engineering development. Read more

In conclusion of Literature search

• Firstly, choosing the best database depends on the type of literature to conduct, there are several types of available databases.  However, when searching for relevant and reliable references, it is advisable to use multiple databases. 
• Secondly, optimal searches in systematic reviews should search at least Web of Science and Google Scholar as a minimum requirement to guarantee adequate and efficient coverage.
• Lastly, Google Scholar is good for conducting simple searches across a broad number of databases. While for complex or in-depth searching we recommend that you search individual subject databases.
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Coming Soon: LitBase is a world literature database with a modern search experience. A curated collection of critical primary texts and secondary sources, it supports research of the most studied authors, poetry, fiction, plays, and creative nonfiction worldwide.

Unparalleled Content for Literary Research

Students, researchers and faculty will benefit from the global nature of this vast literature database covering diverse authors and genres. LitBase includes over 425,000 primary sources, 100,000 secondary and reference sources, and hundreds of full-text scholarly journals and literary magazines to support literature research.

LitBase celebrates authors from all over the world as well as authors from marginalized groups such as the LGBTQ+ community, underserved and indigenous populations in the US, Black authors, and women authors. 

Superior Coverage

While other databases focus mainly on the Western canon, LitBase delivers more with author interviews, biographies, creative nonfiction, literary criticism, poems, poetry reviews, scripts, and short stories from ancient times to the 21 st century, including high culture works that didn’t originate in the West.

Integrates with MLA International Bibliography with Full Text

LitBase and MLA International Bibliography with Full Text come together to create a comprehensive research experience for all. The most recognized literature and language bibliography complements LitBase content with minimal overlap of scholarly journals.

Features & Functionality

• Offers a clean, easy-to-use and intuitive user experience
• Displays options to browse by topic and genre
• Includes an expansive literature thesaurus with 6,400 terms 
• Offers a literary period limiter and advanced search 
• Provides author pages with author biographies and related search results

International Content

LitBase offers full text of historic and contemporary writing from diverse parts of the world, including Africa, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, Ireland, Latin America, New Zealand, Scandinavia, Slavic countries, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Poetry from places with the deepest literary lineage is covered extensively, including influential contributions from Middle Eastern poets and poetry from China, Japan, Vietnam, India, and Southeast Asia.

Unique Full-Text Journals

LitBase includes 300 active full-text journals not available in any other EBSCO database.

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Literature Search: Databases and Gray Literature

The literature search.

• A systematic review search includes a search of databases, gray literature, personal communications, and a handsearch of high impact journals in the related field.  See our list of recommended databases and gray literature sources on this page.
• a comprehensive literature search can not be dependent on a single database, nor on bibliographic databases only.
• inclusion of multiple databases helps avoid publication bias (georaphic bias or bias against publication of negative results).
• The Cochrane Collaboration recommends PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) at a minimum.     
• NOTE:  The Cochrane Collaboration and the IOM recommend that the literature search be conducted by librarians or persons with extensive literature search experience. Please contact the NIH Librarians for assistance with the literature search component of your systematic review. 

Cochrane Library

A collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. Search the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials here.

European database of biomedical and pharmacologic literature.

PubMed comprises more than 21 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.

Largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources. Contains conference papers.

Web of Science

World's leading citation databases. Covers over 12,000 of the highest impact journals worldwide, including Open Access journals and over 150,000 conference proceedings. Coverage in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, with coverage to 1900.

Subject Specific Databases

APA PsycINFO

Over 4.5 million abstracts of peer-reviewed literature in the behavioral and social sciences. Includes conference papers, book chapters, psychological tests, scales and measurement tools.

CINAHL Plus

Comprehensive journal index to nursing and allied health literature, includes books, nursing dissertations, conference proceedings, practice standards and book chapters.

Latin American and Caribbean health sciences literature database

Gray Literature

• Gray Literature  is the term for information that falls outside the mainstream of published journal and mongraph literature, not controlled by commercial publishers
• hard to find studies, reports, or dissertations
• conference abstracts or papers
• governmental or private sector research
• clinical trials - ongoing or unpublished
• experts and researchers in the field     
• Library catalogs
• Professional association websites
• Google Scholar  - Search scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles.
• Dissertation Abstracts - dissertation and theses database - NIH Library biomedical librarians can access and search for you.
• NTIS  - central resource for government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business related information.
• AHRQ  - agency for healthcare research and quality
• Open Grey  - system for information on grey literature in Europe. Open access to 700,000 references to the grey literature.
• World Health Organization  - providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.
• New York Academy of Medicine Grey Literature Report  - a bimonthly publication of The New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) alerting readers to new gray literature publications in health services research and selected public health topics. NOTE: Discontinued as of Jan 2017, but resources are still accessible.
• Gray Source Index
• OpenDOAR - directory of academic repositories
• International Clinical Trials Registery Platform  - from the World Health Organization
• Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry
• Brazilian Clinical Trials Registry
• Chinese Clinical Trial Registry - 
• ClinicalTrials.gov   - U.S.  and international federally and privately supported clinical trials registry and results database
• Clinical Trials Registry  - India
• EU clinical Trials Register
• Japan Primary Registries Network  
• Pan African Clinical Trials Registry

• En español – ExME
• Em português – EME

Literature searches: what databases are available?

Posted on 6th April 2021 by Izabel de Oliveira

Many types of research require a search of the medical literature as part of the process of understanding the current evidence or knowledge base. This can be done using one or more biomedical bibliographic databases. [1]

Bibliographic databases make the information contained in the papers more visible to the scientific community and facilitate locating the desired literature.

This blog describes some of the main bibliographic databases which index medical journals.

PubMed was launched in 1996 and, since June 1997, provides free and unlimited access for all users through the internet. PubMed database contains more than 30 million references of biomedical literature from approximately 7,000 journals. The largest percentage of records in PubMed comes from MEDLINE (95%), which contains 25 million records from over 5,600 journals. Other records derive from other sources such as In-process citations, ‘Ahead of Print’ citations, NCBI Bookshelf, etc.

The second largest component of PubMed is PubMed Central (PMC) . Launched in 2000, PMC is a permanent collection of full-text life sciences and biomedical journal articles. PMC also includes articles deposited by journal publishers and author manuscripts, published articles that are submitted in compliance with the public access policies of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other research funding agencies. PMC contains approximately 4.5 million articles.

Some National Library of Medicine (NLM) resources associated with PubMed are the NLM Catalog and MedlinePlus. The NLM Catalog contains bibliographic records for over 1.4 million journals, books, audiovisuals, electronic resources, and other materials. It also includes detailed indexing information for journals in PubMed and other NCBI databases, although not all materials in the NLM Catalog are part of NLM’s collection. MedlinePlus is a consumer health website providing information on various health topics, drugs, dietary supplements, and health tools.

MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) is the NLM controlled vocabulary used for indexing articles in PubMed. It is used by indexers who analyze and maintain the PubMed database to reflect the subject content of journal articles as they are published. Indexers typically select 10–12 MeSH terms to describe every paper.

Embase is considered the second most popular database after MEDLINE. More than 32 million records from over 8,200 journals from more than 95 countries, and ‘grey literature’ from over 2.4 million conference abstracts, are estimated to be in the Embase content.

Embase contains subtopics in health care such as complementary and alternative medicine, prognostic studies, telemedicine, psychiatry, and health technology. Besides that, it is also widely used for research on drug-related topics as it offers better coverage than MEDLINE on pharmaceutics-related literature.

In 2010, Embase began to include all MEDLINE citations. MEDLINE records are delivered to Elsevier daily and are incorporated into Embase after de-duplication with records already indexed by Elsevier to produce ‘MEDLINE-unique’ records. These MEDLINE-unique records are not re-indexed by Elsevier. However, their indexing is mapped to Emtree terms used in Embase to ensure that Emtree terminology can be used to search all Embase records, including those originally derived from MEDLINE.

Since this coverage expansion—at least in theory and without taking into consideration the different indexing practices of the two databases—a search in Embase alone should cover every record in both Embase and MEDLINE, making Embase a possible “one-stop” search engine for medical research [1].

Emtree is a hierarchically structured, controlled vocabulary for biomedicine and the related life sciences. It includes a whole range of terms for drugs, diseases, medical devices, and essential life science concepts. Emtree is used to index all of the Embase content. This process includes full-text indexing of journal articles, which is done by experts.

The most important index of the technical-scientific literature in Latin America and the Caribbean, LILACS , was created in 1985 to record scientific and technical production in health. It has been maintained and updated by a network of more than 600 institutions of education, government, and health research and coordinated by Latin America and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and World Health Organization (WHO).

LILACS contains scientific and technical literature from over 908 journals from 26 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, with free access. About 900,000 records from articles with peer review, theses and dissertations, government documents, conference proceedings, and books; more than 480,000 of them are available with the full-text link in open access.

The LILACS Methodology is a set of standards, manuals, guides, and applications in continuous development, intended for the collection, selection, description, indexing of documents, and generation of databases. This centralised methodology enables the cooperation between Latin American and Caribbean countries to create local and national databases, all feeding into the LILACS database.  Currently, the databases LILACS, BBO, BDENF, MEDCARIB, and national databases of the countries of Latin America are part of the LILACS System.

Health Sciences Descriptors (DeCS) is the multilingual and structured vocabulary created by BIREME to serve as a unique language in indexing articles from scientific journals, books, congress proceedings, technical reports, and other types of materials, and also for searching and retrieving subjects from scientific literature from information sources available on the Virtual Health Library (VHL) such as LILACS, MEDLINE, and others. It was developed from the MeSH with the purpose of permitting the use of common terminology for searching in multiple languages, and providing a consistent and unique environment for the retrieval of information. DeCS vocabulary is dynamic and totals 34,118 descriptors and qualifiers, of which 29,716 come from MeSH, and 4,402 are exclusive.

Cochrane CENTRAL

The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) is a database of reports of randomized and quasi-randomized controlled trials. Most records are obtained from the bibliographic databases PubMed and Embase, with additional records from the published and unpublished sources of CINAHL, ClinicalTrials.gov, and the WHO’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

Although CENTRAL first began publication in 1996, records are included irrespective of the date of publication, and the language of publication is also not a restriction to being included in the database.  You won’t find the full text to the article on CENTRAL but there is often a summary of the article, in addition to the standard details of author, source, and year.

Within CENTRAL, there are ‘Specialized Registers’ which are collected and maintained by Cochrane Review Groups (plus a few Cochrane Fields), which include reports of controlled trials relevant to their area of interest. Some Cochrane Centres search the general healthcare literature of their countries or regions in order to contribute records to CENTRAL.

ScienceDirect

ScienceDirect i s Elsevier’s most important peer-reviewed academic literature platform. It was launched in 1997 and contains 16 million records from over 2,500 journals, including over 250 Open Access publications, such as Cell Reports and The Lancet Global Health, as well as 39,000 eBooks.

ScienceDirect topics include:

• health sciences;
• life sciences;
• physical sciences;
• engineering;
• social sciences; and
• humanities.

Web of Science

Web of Science (previously Web of Knowledge) is an online scientific citation indexing service created in 1997 by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), and currently maintained by Clarivate Analytics.

Web of Science covers several fields of the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Its main resource is the Web of Science Core Collection which includes over 1 billion cited references dating back to 1900, indexed from 21,100 peer-reviewed journals, including Open Access journals, books and proceedings.

Web of Science also offers regional databases which cover:

• Latin America (SciELO Citation Index);
• China (Chinese Science Citation Database);
• Korea (Korea Citation Index);
• Russia (Russian Science Citation Index).

Boolean operators

To make the search more precise, we can use boolean operators in databases between our keywords.

We use boolean operators to focus on a topic, particularly when this topic contains multiple search terms, and to connect various pieces of information in order to find exactly what we are looking for.

Boolean operators connect the search words to either narrow or broaden the set of results. The three basic boolean operators are: AND, OR, and NOT.

• AND narrows a search by telling the database that all keywords used must be found in the article in order for it to appear in our results.
• OR broadens a search by telling the database that any of the words it connects are acceptable (this is useful when we are searching for synonymous words).
• NOT narrows the search by telling the database to eliminate all terms that follow it from our search results (this is helpful when we are interested in a specific aspect of a topic or when we want to exclude a type of article.

References (pdf)

You may also be interested in the following blogs for further reading:

Conducting a systematic literature search

Reviewing the evidence: what method should I use?

Cochrane Crowd for students: what’s in it for you?

Izabel de Oliveira

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• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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Citation Databases

• Searching Scopus
• Researcher Profiles
• Researcher IDs
• Searching Web of Science
• Google Scholar
• Research Impact and Metrics

Bibliometrics Overview

Welcome to Purdue University's Citation Databases Research Guide

Here you will find...

• Information on citation databases
• Descriptions of these databases
• Helpful examples on how to use them
• Use cases for each of the major citation databases
• Useful tips and tricks on how to best make use of them

Here are some definitions of common terms made use of by citation databases

• Bibliometrics is the statistical analysis of scholarly output like articles, book chapters, and reviews.
• Altmetrics: is the statistical analysis of alternative forms of capture such as twitter impressions of a piece of scholarly output.

Some common metrics are the H-index, Journal Impact Factor, and the FWCI (called CNCI in Web of Science).

• H-Index is a measure of how many times a journals published articles are cited, an index of fifteen means an article has been cited 15 times.
• Journal Impact Factor (IF) – A measurement of how many times a journal’s published articles are cited by different researchers.
• FWCI – Publication Field weighted citation indices indicate how the number of citations received by researcher’s publications compared to the average number for similar publications.
• Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) – Calculated using Web of Science, CNCI is “an indicator of impact normalized for subject focus, age and document type. A CNCI of 1 is at par with the world average, anything above 2 is twice the global average
• SJR - Scimago Journal Rank is a measure of the "prestige" of journals which makes use of both the number of citations a journal accrues and the perception of those journals in the wider academic community
• SNIP - Source Normalized Impact per Paper is a metric which accounts for the field specific differences between journals. The need for this is that some fields have different publishing practices, time frames, and constraints. This results in the need for a metric like SNIP which is calculated by comparing the citations per journal with the citation potential of the field as a whole, in other words it would measure of history journal against other history journals and vice versa for other academic disciplines

Here are the five most common Citation Databases' Key Strengths and Use Cases

• Web of Science: Core Collection 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. -Science Citation Index Expanded (1900-present) -Social Sciences Citation Index (1900-present) -Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present) -Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science (1990-present) -Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Social Science & Humanities (1990-present) -Book Citation Index– Science (2005-present) -Book Citation Index– Social Sciences & Humanities (2005-present) -Current Chemical Reactions (1985-present) (Includes Institut National de la Propriete Industrielle structure data back to 1840) -Index Chemicus (1993-present) -Emerging Sources Citation Index (2005 – present)
• Google Scholar Searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. It includes a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
• Dimensions Dimensions is a citations database which specializes in providing abstracts, citations, and patents to users. While the Library does not currently subscribe, you can access the free version of the database from this link

• Next: Scopus >>
• Last Updated: Apr 11, 2024 9:42 AM
• URL: https://guides.lib.purdue.edu/citationdatabases

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Features information on literary figures from all time periods in such genres as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, history, and journalism. 

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• Indian J Anaesth
• v.60(9); 2016 Sep

Literature search for research planning and identification of research problem

Anju grewal.

Department of Anaesthesiology, Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana, Punjab, India

Hanish Kataria

1 Department of Surgery, Government Medical College and Hospital, Chandigarh, India

2 Department of Cardiac Anaesthesia, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India

Literature search is a key step in performing good authentic research. It helps in formulating a research question and planning the study. The available published data are enormous; therefore, choosing the appropriate articles relevant to your study in question is an art. It can be time-consuming, tiring and can lead to disinterest or even abandonment of search in between if not carried out in a step-wise manner. Various databases are available for performing literature search. This article primarily stresses on how to formulate a research question, the various types and sources for literature search, which will help make your search specific and time-saving.

INTRODUCTION

Literature search is a systematic and well-organised search from the already published data to identify a breadth of good quality references on a specific topic.[ 1 ] The reasons for conducting literature search are numerous that include drawing information for making evidence-based guidelines, a step in the research method and as part of academic assessment.[ 2 ] However, the main purpose of a thorough literature search is to formulate a research question by evaluating the available literature with an eye on gaps still amenable to further research.

Research problem[ 3 ] is typically a topic of interest and of some familiarity to the researcher. It needs to be channelised by focussing on information yet to be explored. Once we have narrowed down the problem, seeking and analysing existing literature may further straighten out the research approach.

A research hypothesis[ 4 ] is a carefully created testimony of how you expect the research to proceed. It is one of the most important tools which aids to answer the research question. It should be apt containing necessary components, and raise a question that can be tested and investigated.

The literature search can be exhaustive and time-consuming, but there are some simple steps which can help you plan and manage the process. The most important are formulating the research questions and planning your search.

FORMULATING THE RESEARCH QUESTION

Literature search is done to identify appropriate methodology, design of the study; population sampled and sampling methods, methods of measuring concepts and techniques of analysis. It also helps in determining extraneous variables affecting the outcome and identifying faults or lacunae that could be avoided.

Formulating a well-focused question is a critical step for facilitating good clinical research.[ 5 ] There can be general questions or patient-oriented questions that arise from clinical issues. Patient-oriented questions can involve the effect of therapy or disease or examine advantage versus disadvantage for a group of patients.[ 6 ]

For example, we want to evaluate the effect of a particular drug (e.g., dexmedetomidine) for procedural sedation in day care surgery patients. While formulating a research question, one should consider certain criteria, referred as ‘FINER’ (F-Feasible, I-Interesting, N-Novel, E-Ethical, R-Relevant) criteria.[ 5 ] The idea should be interesting and relevant to clinical research. It should either confirm, refute or add information to already done research work. One should also keep in mind the patient population under study and the resources available in a given set up. Also the entire research process should conform to the ethical principles of research.

The patient or study population, intervention, comparison or control arm, primary outcome, timing of measurement of outcome (PICOT) is a well-known approach for framing a leading research question.[ 7 , 8 ] Dividing the questions into key components makes it easy and searchable. In this case scenario:

• Patients (P) – What is the important group of patients? for example, day care surgery
• Intervention (I) – What is the important intervention? for example, intravenous dexmedetomidine
• Comparison (C) – What is the important intervention of comparison? for example, intravenous ketamine
• Outcome (O) – What is the effect of intervention? for example, analgesic efficacy, procedural awareness, drug side effects
• Time (T) – Time interval for measuring the outcome: Hourly for first 4 h then 4 hourly till 24 h post-procedure.

Multiple questions can be formulated from patient's problem and concern. A well-focused question should be chosen for research according to significance for patient interest and relevance to our knowledge. Good research questions address the lacunae in available literature with an aim to impact the clinical practice in a constructive manner. There are limited outcome research and relevant resources, for example, electronic database system, database and hospital information system in India. Even when these factors are available, data about existing resources is not widely accessible.[ 9 ]

TYPES OF MEDICAL LITERATURE

(Further details in chapter ‘Types of studies and research design’ in this issue).

Primary literature

Primary sources are the authentic publication of an expert's new evidence, conclusions and proposals (case reports, clinical trials, etc) and are usually published in a peer-reviewed journal. Preliminary reports, congress papers and preprints also constitute primary literature.[ 2 ]

Secondary literature

Secondary sources are systematic review articles or meta-analyses where material derived from primary source literature are infererred and evaluated.[ 2 ]

Tertiary literature

Tertiary literature consists of collections that compile information from primary or secondary literature (eg., reference books).[ 2 ]

METHODS OF LITERATURE SEARCH

There are various methods of literature search that are used alone or in combination [ Table 1 ]. For past few decades, searching the local as well as national library for books, journals, etc., was the usual practice and still physical literature exploration is an important component of any systematic review search process.[ 10 , 11 ] With the advancement of technology, the Internet is now the gateway to the maze of vast medical literature.[ 12 ] Conducting a literature review involves web-based search engines, i.e., Google, Google Scholar, etc., [ Table 2 ], or using various electronic research databases to identify materials that describe the research topic or those homologous to it.[ 13 , 14 ]

Methods of literature search

Web based methods of literature search

The various databases available for literature search include databases for original published articles in the journals [ Table 2 ] and evidence-based databases for integrated information available as systematic reviews and abstracts [ Table 3 ].[ 12 , 14 ] Most of these are not freely available to the individual user. PubMed ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ ) is the largest available resource since 1996; however, a large number of sources now provide free access to literature in the biomedical field.[ 15 ] More than 26 million citations from Medline, life science journals and online books are included in PubMed. Links to the full-text material are included in citations from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.[ 16 ] The choice of databases depends on the subject of interest and potential coverage by the different databases. Education Resources Information Centre is a free online digital library of education research and information sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education, available at http://eric.ed.gov/ . No one database can search all the medical literature. There is need to search several different databases. At a minimum, PubMed or Medline, Embase and the Cochrane central trials Registry need to be searched. When searching these databases, emphasis should be given to meta-analysis, systematic reviews randomised controlled trials and landmark studies.

Electronic source of Evidence-Based Database

Time allocated to the search needs attention as exploring and selecting data are early steps in the research method and research conducted as part of academic assessment have narrow timeframes.[ 17 ] In Indian scenario, limited outcome research and accessibility to data leads to less thorough knowledge of nature of research problem. This results in the formulation of the inappropriate research question and increases the time to literature search.

TYPES OF SEARCH

Type of search can be described in different forms according to the subject of interest. It increases the chances of retrieving relevant information from a search.

Translating research question to keywords

This will provide results based on any of the words specified; hence, they are the cornerstone of an effective search. Synonyms/alternate terms should be considered to elicit further information, i.e., barbiturates in place of thiopentone. Spellings should also be taken into account, i.e., anesthesia in place of anaesthesia (American and British). Most databases use controlled word-stock to establish common search terms (or keywords). Some of these alternative keywords can be looked from database thesaurus.[ 4 ] Another strategy is combining keywords with Boolean operators. It is important to keep a note of keywords and methods used in exploring the literature as these will need to be described later in the design of search process.

‘Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) is the National Library of Medicine's controlled hierarchical vocabulary that is used for indexing articles in PubMed, with more specific terms organised underneath more general terms’.[ 17 ] This provides a reliable way to retrieve citations that use different terminology for identical ideas, as it indexes articles based on content. Two features of PubMed that can increase yield of specific articles are ‘Automatic term mapping’ and ‘automatic term explosion’.[ 4 ]

For example, if the search keyword is heart attack, this term will match with MeSH transcription table heading and then explode into various subheadings. This helps to construct the search by adding and selecting MeSH subheadings and families of MeSH by use of hyperlinks.[ 4 ]

We can set limits to a clinical trial for retrieving higher level of evidence (i.e., randomised controlled clinical trial). Furthermore, one can browse through the link entitled ‘Related Articles’. This PubMed feature searches for similar citations using an intricate algorithm that scans titles, abstracts and MeSH terms.[ 4 ]

Phrase search

This will provide pages with only the words typed in the phrase, in that exact order and with no words in between them.

Boolean operators

AND, OR and NOT are the three Boolean operators named after the mathematician George Boole.[ 18 ] Combining two words using ‘AND’ will fetch articles that mention both the words. Using ‘OR’ will widen the search and fetch more articles that mention either subject. While using the term ‘NOT’ to combine words will fetch articles containing the first word but not the second, thus narrowing the search.

Filters can also be used to refine the search, for example, article types, text availability, language, age, sex and journal categories.

Overall, the recommendations for methodology of literature search can be as below (Creswell)[ 19 ]

• Identify keywords and use them to search articles from library and internet resources as described above
• Search several databases to search articles related to your topic
• Use thesaurus to identify terms to locate your articles
• Find an article that is similar to your topic; then look at the terms used to describe it, and use them for your search
• Use databases that provide full-text articles (free through academic libraries, Internet or for a fee) as much as possible so that you can save time searching for your articles
• If you are examining a topic for the first time and unaware of the research on it, start with broad syntheses of the literature, such as overviews, summaries of the literature on your topic or review articles
• Start with the most recent issues of the journals, and look for studies about your topic and then work backward in time. Follow-up on references at the end of the articles for more sources to examine
• Refer books on a single topic by a single author or group of authors or books that contain chapters written by different authors
• Next look for recent conference papers. Often, conference papers report the latest research developments. Contact authors of pertinent studies. Write or phone them, asking if they know of studies related to your area of interest
• The easy access and ability to capture entire articles from the web make it attractive. However, check these articles carefully for authenticity and quality and be cautious about whether they represent systematic research.

The whole process of literature search[ 20 ] is summarised in Figure 1 .

Process of literature search

Literature search provides not only an opportunity to learn more about a given topic but provides insight on how the topic was studied by previous analysts. It helps to interpret ideas, detect shortcomings and recognise opportunities. In short, systematic and well-organised research may help in designing a novel research.

Financial support and sponsorship

Conflicts of interest.

There are no conflicts of interest.

ENGL 1102 Worozbyt Spring 2024 : Databases

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Literature Databases

A source for literary research on writers and their works throughout history and the world. Content is obtained from Facts On Files print literature collection, Harold Blooms essays, and critical articles published by noted scholars under the Blooms Literary Criticism imprints.

Includes essays and commentary on the careers and works of major literary figures. Coverage: 1800s - present. Formerly Literature Criticism Online.

A digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. It offers an interdisciplinary journal archive across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences

• ProQuest One Literature This link opens in a new window Provides support for the study of English literature by bringing together primary works, reference materials, and literary criticism. Content includes books and scholarly journals covering 600 AD to the present. Formerly: Literature Online (LION)
• Project Muse This link opens in a new window Provides complete, full-text content in digital humanities and social science from over 120 publishers, Including scholarly journals from leading university presses and scholarly societies are indexed and peer-reviewed, and full-text access includes current content from over 400 titles

General Databases

These are our big, multi-disciplinary databases. They are good places to start when you are still working on your topic.

A scholarly, multi-disciplinary database providing indexing and abstracts for thousands of journals and other publications. PDF content dates back to 1887.

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A more in-depth, longer version of the above video:

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Expos 20 | Problems of Meaning: Language, Literature, and Life

• Subject Databases: Tools for Deep-Searching and Close-Looking
• Problems of Meaning in Language, Literature, and Life
• HOLLIS: Searching Panoramically Across Harvard's Discovery Space

Databases: Why Use Them?

Top picks for essay 3.

• Generating Research Leads From What You Have in Hand
• Getting around Paywalls on the Web
• Citing Your Sources

Research projects often require you to look close up at a body of research produced by scholars in a particular field.  This research is typically collected, codified, and made findable in a tool called a  subject database .

Every academic discipline has at least one subject database that's considered the disciplinary gold standard -- a reliable, (relatively) comprehensive, and accurate record of the books that scholars are publishing, and the ideas they're debating and discussing in important and influential journals. 

Databases are like lenses: they change what you see and how you see it -- and they offer you easy and efficient ways to bring your questions into sharper focus.

Philosophy 

Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy .

• Excellent for overview essays written by recognized subject experts and prominent academics, and accompanied by bibliography leads. 

Oxford Bibliographies Online: Philosophy    Harvard Key  

• Annotated reading lists curated by experts, regularly checked for their currency and updated when necessary, OBOs aim to be representative, not comprehensive -- of the most impactful scholarship that's been produced to date. 
• An online databas of scholarship  maintained by philosophers themselves that collects, categorizes, and makes philosophy research findable.  Specially curated pages perhaps pertinent to course themes include Philosophy of Language (which identifies key works and key introductory texts); Philosophy of Literature ; and Literary Values .

LINGUISTICS 

Oxford bibliographies online: linguistics    harvard key , linguistics and language behavior abstracts   harvard key .

• A database that identifies articles, books, and other scholarly materials on linguistics and its related fields. 

Psychology 

Oxford bibliographies online: language (psychology) , apa psycinfo    harvard key .

• The most important database access to research on all aspects of psychology,

LITERATURE 

Johns hopkins guide to literary theory and criticism    harvard key .

• A comprehensive survey of the the most important figures, schools, and movements in literary theory.

Oxford Bibliographies Online: Literary and Cultural Theory   Harvard Key 

Mla international bibliography     harvard key .

• The gold standard database for topics related to literature in all languages, folklore, cultural studies, theory, and more. 

Multidisciplinary 

Google scholar.

Although it's not a Harvard Library "database,"  Google Scholar  is perfectly acceptable for most general forays into scholarship; its algorithms are excellent and do return relevant results.

One of the best ways to generate research leads with Scholar is to use it to follow  citation trails    when you have a known source -- a class reading, a book you've found on HOLLIS that looks promising, an article that's so "perfect" for a research project that you want to see if there's "more like it" out there, waiting to be discovered. 

For example: 

• You can click on  cited by   to see which scholars picked up and used a research article/book in research. Just enter the title.
• Big "cited by" lists can be whittled down by adding keywords and clicking on the   search within cited reference  option.
• Related articles  helps you identify r esearch that's close ----algorithmically, at least -- to the item you started with. 
• Authors whose names are hotlinked reveal publications pages -- where you migth find additional/related publications (and see their times cited, too!)
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How to Search for IPE Literature

In order to find articles about interprofessional education, consider searching using the term "interprofessional education" and add any other terms of interest to narrow down the search results.

• CINAHL Plus with Full Text Date coverage varies. Citations and fulltext. Covers the nursing and allied health literature, providing fulltext for more than 620 journals.
• Cochrane Library 1999-present. This collection of databases contains high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. Cochrane reviews represent the highest level of evidence on which to base clinical treatment decisions.
• Embase Embase is a crucial resource for discovering biomedical evidence within published, peer-reviewed literature, in-press publications and conference abstracts. An essential database for systematic reviews.
• PsycARTICLES Date coverage varies, mostly 1985-present. Fulltext, citations and abstracts. Covers general psychology and specialized basic, applied, clinical, and theoretical research in psychology in areas including animal behavior, cognition, memory, neuroscience, perception, physiological psychology, psycholinguistics, psychometrics, social and personality psychology.
• PubMed Search biomedical literature from 1950- present. Includes MEDLINE and other resources. Includes links to full-text articles when available.
• Web of Science (Note: does not currently support Internet Explorer 9.) Includes SCIENCE CITATION INDEX EXPANDED (1900 - present ), SOCIAL SCIENCES CITATION INDEX EXPANDED (1956 - present), and ARTS & HUMANITIES CITATION INDEX (1975 - present). All subjects are covered. Indexes articles from almost 10,000 journals as well as the citations in the articles indexed. Recent years include abstracts.
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ENGL 2341 - Forms of Literature Library Research (Tony Procell): Library Video Tutorials

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Library Video Modules for English Literature Library Research

The EPCC College Library Instruction Video Modules aim to build information competency in students and use the Association of Colleges and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education  as a guide for all library instruction activities. As defined by the American Library Association (ALA) , Information literacy is a set of abilities requiring individuals to “recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.” This library instruction also supports EPCC Institutional Student Learning Outcome # 2 - Critical Thinking: Students will engage in creative and critical thinking, innovation, and inquiry and demonstrate analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of information. 

Below you will find self-paced modules to develop your information literacy competency skills and learn how to use the EPCC Libraries resources.

If you have any additional questions after reviewing the modules please contact Lorely Ambriz at [email protected] or (915) 831-8886.

Module 1 - Introudction to History Library Research Guide

English Literature Library Research Module 1 

(Duration: 19 minutes)

• How to navigate and find your history library research guide
• How to create a search strategy using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, " ", *)

• Search Strategy Worksheet - NW Lorely Ambriz

Module 4 - Online searching and evaluation

English Literature Library Research Module 4 (Duration: 19 minutes)

• How to search on Google
• How to evaluate online resources using the SIFT method

• SIFT Worksheet - EPCC NW Library

Module 2 - Literature Specific Online Databases

English Literature Library Research Module 2 

(Duration: 12 minutes)

• How to search English Literature subject-specific databases

• Critical Approaches Handout - NW Lorely Ambriz

Module 3 - Google Scholar

English Literature Library Research Module 3

(Duration: 6 minutes)

• How to search Google Scholar

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