Library Guides: PH 290: Biostats Seminar: More Databases, Systematic Reviews, "Grey Lit."

Additional Databases

Remember those PubMed Tips? Most are applicable to many other online databases. For a comprehensive list of dozens of databases, see the guide to Databases in Public Health.

Embase This link opens in a new window
Search for biomedical literature citations. Embase is a key resource for conducting systematic reviews and researching evidence-based medicine. [dates vary]
Indexes journals, including many not in Medline, from over 90 countries, and indexes conference abstracts from many conferences. Broad biomedical scope with strong coverage in drug, pharmaceutical, and toxicological research including economic evaluation.
Global Health This link opens in a new window
Indexes journals, books, reports, and more on the topics such as environmental and occupational health, food safety and hygiene, infectious diseases, medical microbiology, nutrition, public health, toxicology, and zoonoses. [1912 - present]
Limited free full text is available for some hard-to-find journal articles, conference proceedings, reports, and research articles from smaller, society and non-English publishers. Note: The header says "CABI: CAB Abstracts and Global Health"
AGRICOLA This link opens in a new window
Citations for articles on all aspects of agriculture. [1970 - present]
Indexes books, journal articles, audiovisual materials, state agricultural and USDA publications. Subjects include agriculture, agricultural economics, animal science, entomology, horticulture, nutrition, plant diseases, and soil science.
BIOSIS Previews This link opens in a new window
Citations for journal articles, conference papers, and books on a wide variety of biological and biomedical topics. [1926 - present]
Indexes journals, books, and conference proceedings are indexed on a wide variety of biological and biomedical topics. An electronic version to the print counterparts, Biological Abstracts and Biological Abstracts/RRM.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, dissertations, and technical reports. (Psychological Abstracts, Psychinfo) [1806 - current]
Indexes journals, conference proceedings, books, reports, and dissertations in psychology and enriched with literature from psychiatry, education, business, medicine, nursing, pharmacology, law, linguistics, and social work.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Indexes journals, books, dissertations, and reviews in the social sciences on sociological topics as well as selected anthropology, criminology, demography, law, social psychology, and urban development. [1952 - present]
Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text for more than 7000 scholarly journals and other sources, including nearly 1100 peer-reviewed business publications. Offers information in nearly every area of business including management, economics, finance, and accounting. [1965 - present]
Indexing, abstracts, and (in many cases) the full text of articles for the most important scholarly business journals as well as popular and trade magazines and newsletters.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Indexes journals, conference proceedings, trade publications, and book series in the sciences and more.
Contains over 50 million records with more than half the content originating from outside North America. Indexes over 21,000 journals, conference proceedings, trade publications, and book series in the sciences, technology, medicine, arts, and humanities.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Indexes leading journals in the arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences. Allows cited reference searching. (ISI Web of Knowledge) [1900 - present]
Provides links to footnoted citations as well as sources that have subsequently cited an article. Includes the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (from 1975), Science Citation Index (from 1900), and Social Sciences Citation Index (from 1900).

Catalogs

UC Library Search is the UC Berkeley/UC library catalog. Use the library catalog to find books, reports, etc. on your topic. Books, while not often where original research is published, can often provide an overview of a topic and get you started with some key articles.

Grey Literature

Grey Literature generally refers to publications not produced by commercial publishers, including reports (pre-prints, preliminary progress and advanced reports, technical reports, market research reports, etc.), theses, conference proceedings, and other documents. They are often produced by government entities, research institutions, or NGOs/IGOs.

The Public Health Library's Public Health Subject Guides web guide consists of web pages by topic. Each page consists of annotated lists of organizations, agencies, databases, and publications. Topics include:
• Environmental Health
• Food/Nutrition
• Maternal and Child Health
• Statistical/Data Resources
and many more.

Google and other search engines can be useful for finding grey literature. Improve your search using:
• Quotes for phrase searching:
"social marketing"
• Site: to specify a particular site or domain:
"social marketing" site:.org (for a domain search); "social marketing" site:cdcnpin.org (for a specific site search)
• Boolean search statements (eg, OR):
("social marketing" OR "audience segmentation")

NTRL (National Technical Reports Library) This link opens in a new window
Citations and some full text for technical reports from the Departments of Defense, Energy, Transportation, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and other government agencies.
NTRL is the gateway to indexes, abstracts, and technical reports of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). The NTIS archives reports from the Departments of Defense, Energy, Transportation, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and others.

Systematic Reviews

"Systematic reviews seek to collate all evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria in order to address a specific research question. They aim to minimize bias by using explicit, systematic methods." (from Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions)

A systematic review is a review that reports or includes the following:
i) research question
ii) sources that were searched, with a reproducible search strategy (naming of databases, naming of search platforms/engines, search date and complete search strategy)
iii) inclusion and exclusion criteria
iv) selection (screening) methods
v) critically appraises and reports the quality/risk of bias of the included studies
vi) information about data analysis and synthesis that allows the reproducibility of the results
(from Krnic Martinic, M., Pieper, D., Glatt, A. et al. Definition of a systematic review used in overviews of systematic reviews, meta-epidemiological studies and textbooks. BMC Med Res Methodol 19, 203 (2019) doi:10.1186/s12874-019-0855-0)

Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
A collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. [date varies]
Indexes journal articles, reviews, and bibliographies which provide evidence-based effects of health care, as well as a register of published economic evaluations of health care interventions and information on healthcare technology assessment from seven databases such as The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Controlled Trials Register, and the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness.

Effective Public Health Practice Project Systematic Reviews
Small collection of public health systematic reviews
Public Health +
Methodologically sound studies from top journals in a browsable, searchable database
Health Evidence
Methodologically-sound reviews of health promotion and public health interventions
Health Systems Evidence
Continuously updated repository of syntheses of research evidence about governance, financial and delivery arrangements within health systems, and about implementation strategies that can support change in health systems. Also contains economic evaluations, descriptions of health system reforms, and descriptions of health systems.
Database of promoting health effectiveness reviews (DoPHER)
Systematic and non-systematic reviews of effectiveness in health promotion and public health worldwide
Campbell Collaboration Systematic Reviews
Systematic reviews, evidence and gap maps, and methods research papers. Topics include social welfare, education, crime & justice, disability, and more. Use the link above or use the search feature on the Campbell website.

PubMed This link opens in a new window
Search biomedical literature citations from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. [1950 - present]
Access to citations from MEDLINE, PreMEDLINE, other journals in the field of medicine and life sciences, and links to NCBI's integrated molecular biology databases including nucleotide sequences, protein sequences, 3-D protein structure data, population study data sets, and assemblies of complete genomes in an integrated system.
Note: The link above goes to a specially configured version of PubMed for UC Berkeley users that will display the Get It button for full text access. To use the free public version, please click here.