1) Medline

Medline is the premiere database for finding biomedical journal articles. There are several different options available to search Medline:

EBSCO, which has a similar interface to several other databases offered by SFU;
Ovid, which some find better for advanced searching;
PubMed, from the National Library of Medicine. In addition to the core Medline database, PubMed also includes articles from journals not indexed in Medline (mostly life sciences journals), and articles that have just been published and have not yet been added to Medline.

In class I will do some demo-searching of EBSCO MEDLINE. The EBSCO interface can feel a bit more straightforward than PubMed, so I will go into a bit more detail about PubMed here.

The PubMed interface is freely available to anyone online. When accessing PubMed, be sure to connect through the SFU Library's website. This will ensure you are able to link to the full text articles that SFU offers.

To search PubMed, identify the key concepts you're looking for, and enter them into the search box. An "AND" is assumed between words you type in - i.e., PubMed will search for articles that contain all of the words. To search for an exact phrase, put quotes around the words. Next, you may want to apply filters (article type, language, publication date, etc) to your search. You can do so on the left hand side of the screen. If the limit you want is not shown, click "Show Additional Filters."

The default view for PubMed search results is a list of article citations - article title, authors, journal name, volume, date, page numbers. Click any article title to read the abstract (if available), and to see the "Where can I get this?" yellow box in the upper right corner:

Where can I get this? link

Clicking "Where can I get this?" will take you to any full text that SFU offers, or will let you know whether SFU has a copy in print at the Library. If there is no full text or print copy available, you can order the article using the "Search other libraries / request this item" link.

Here are some suggested search strategies for finding health conditions of a country using PubMed (with example Brazil):

Brazil epidemiology
Brazil (morbidity OR mortality)
Brazil "burden of disease"
Brazil DALY
You might try adding various filters to narrow your search.

For more in-depth guidance on searching PubMed, please contact Hazel Plante at hazel_plante@sfu.ca or review this excellent tutorial PubMed tutorial.

3) Global Health

Global Health is not as sophisticated as EBSCO Medline or even PubMed. That said, it covers many international journals not indexed by MEDLINE or others. It is a public health database covering international health, biomedicine, non-communicable diseases, public health nutrition, etc. More than 3,500 journals, monographs, and proceedings are indexed as well as other documents such as patents. Material originates from more than 125 countries and contains nearly 900,000 health records dating back to 1973. Full text is provided in most instances.

Searching Global Health is primarily done by keyword searching. Limits can be applied using the options on the left-hand side of the page.

4) Web of Science

Web of Science is another excellent database for finding health research. It also has some unique features: cited reference searching and journal impact factors, neither of which are especially relevant to your assignment but are useful to know about for later.

Keyword searching by topic in Web of Science is fairly similar to PubMed. A different set of journals are indexed in this database, so you might find some articles you wouldn't otherwise. You can sort your results by relevance or number of times cited, rather than just by date published. Search results are in citation format, with "Where can I get this?" links to help you find the full article.

5) Google Scholar

Google Scholar can be another useful source for finding research in global health - particularly grey literature from NGOs or government agencies, which is not indexed in databases like PubMed, Ovid Medline or Web of Science. As with PubMed, be sure to access Google Scholar via the Library's website to ensure you see the "Where can I get this?" links that will take you to full text SFU offers. Just go to Journal articles and databases on the Library's homepage, then use the Google Scholar box you find there.

Google Scholar searches the full text of articles, while databases such as PubMed, Ovid Medline and Web of Science search only the title, abstract and subject headings. This means it will often find more articles than the other databases, although some of the articles found might be less relevant if your keywords are only mentioned in passing in the article. Search results in Google Scholar are relevance-ranked rather than sorted by date, so you will likely find very good articles on the first few pages of results. You can easily find other articles which have cited a paper, which can be a good way to find related research.

6) General database search tips

Depending on your specific research topic, there are a host of other databases relevant to global health which you might want to search.

Some search techniques are common to most or all databases:

If you're finding too many articles:

Try adding terms to your search. In some databases, you'll need to type "AND" between the words; in others, such as PubMed and Web of Science, it's assumed.
Exact phrase searching will also narrow your search.
Consider using "NOT" to rule out irrelevant articles; e.g. diabetes NOT insipidus. Use with caution as you may lose some good articles.
Use any relevant limits - limit to articles published in the last 5 years, limit to review articles, etc.

If you're finding too few articles:

Think of any possible synonyms you could use and add them to your search by using "OR" between words.
Use truncation (aka wildcard searching) - put an asterisk before the end of a word to find all variant endings. E.g. physio* will find articles using the words physiology, physiological, physiotherapy, etc.
Check the subject headings - called MeSH in PubMed, Subject Areas in Web of Science - to get ideas for other ways your idea might be categorized.

7) Global health e-journals

Going directly to an e-journal's site can also be a good way to find information. You can search by keyword as well as browse through issues. Below are some selected Global Health e-journals; more can be found here.

You can find any e-journals SFU offers by going to "Electronic Journals" under the Find tab on the Library's homepage, then searching for the title. They are also linked in the Library's Catalogue. Many e-journals are included in multiple databases, so you have several choices of how to access the full text.

8) Citation Management Tools

Citation or reference management tools collect your journal article, book, or other document citations together in one place, and help you create properly formatted bibliographies in almost any style — in seconds. Citation management tools help you keep track of your sources while you work and store your references for future use and reuse.

HSCI 821: Introduction to global health

On this page