Start With These Databases
- CINAHL Plus with Full TextScholarly articles and other publications on nursing, biomedicine, and consumer health.
- MEDLINE with Full TextIndex to scholarly journal articles on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and more.
- PubMedA service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, PubMed includes over 17 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to the 1950s. PubMed includes links to full text articles and other related resources.
- Web of ScienceIndex to articles in scholarly journals and conference proceedings from all fields of study, plus the ability to search these articles' bibliographies by cited author or work. Links to full text are included where possible.
Some Additional Useful Databases
- AGRICOLAThe catalog and index to the collections of the National Agricultural Library, as well as a primary public source for world-wide access to agricultural information.
- AGRIS, 1975 - presentAGRIS is a freely available database of bibliographical records on agricultural science and technology. 79.6% of records are citations from scientific journals. The bibliographic references contain either links to the full text of the publication or additional information retrieved from related Internet resources. This database is made available by the Food & Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.
- Alt-HealthWatchFull text articles, reports, conference proceedings, pamphlets and newsletters dealing with complementary and alternative medicine, including holistic and integrated approaches to health care and wellness.
- Biosis PreviewsIndex to scholarly journal articles, books, reports and conference papers covering biomedical and life sciences research.
- Health Source: Consumer EditionThe full text of a range of consumer health magazines, pamphlets, and reference books covering consumer health topics such as food sciences and nutrition, children's health, women's health, sports medicine, and general health. Also includes thousands of Clinical Reference Systems reports.
- Health Source: Nursing/Academic EditionFull text for hundreds of scholarly journals focusing on many medical disciplines, with a particular focus on nursing and allied health.
- Natural & Alternative TreatmentsThis database contains detailed information on hundreds of different conditions and the conventional and natural treatments used to treat them, herbs and supplements, plus drug-herb and drug-supplement interactions for a range of drug categories.
- SciFinderSciFinder provides access to the world's most comprehensive and authoritative source of references, substances, and reactions in chemistry and related sciences. It includes the Chemical Abstracts database, which contains references to millions of journal articles and related documents. Users can search by chemical substance or reaction, research topic, author, or specific CA or patent reference.
All users must register for an account using their official BGSU email address.
PubMed Searching Tutorials
- PubMed Simple Search VideoFrom the National Library of Medicine, a simple search tutorial for PubMed.
- Finding Systematic ReviewsPreselected strategies for finding Systematic Reviews in Pubmed.
- Saving Citations in PubMed to Citation Manager (RefWorks)Detailed instructions to save, or export citations
Advanced Searching
- Detailed Search Strings for Manual Therapies in PubMedDeveloped by a team of medical librarians and international researchers
Is It a Scholarly Journal?
Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory: Entries include information about whether the journal or magazine is a scholarly journal, consumer magazine, etc.
Instructions to Authors in the Health Sciences. This database of author instructions for more than 3,500 periodicals will frequently say if the periodical is peer-reviewed.
Paper journals: Frequently include instruction for authors in the front or back of the journal. Some instructions will use the phrase "peer reviewed." Others will say that manuscripts are sent for blind review, reviewed by a committee, or anonymously reviewed.
Research Databases: Some allow you to limit your search to scholarly journals. CINAHL allows you to limit your search to peer reviewed journals and indicates that an article is peer reviewed in the Journal Subset field when appropriate. MEDLINE has indexed only scholarly journals since 1975.
Popular vs. Scholarly
Parts of a scholarly journal article
This video is from Bowman Library at Menlo College.