Research Guides: Systematic Review: Searching the Literature

Searching the literature

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Begin your search journey with a librarian!

Librarians can recommend databases and other sources to search for a systematic review. Check Database Finder for a full list of available sources across all disciplines.

Librarians can also help with designing complex searches using the specialized syntax of individual databases. Consult your subject librarian, if you have questions.

Search more databases to limit bias! Why?

The more resources, the better

“The conduct of the search for and selection of evidence may have serious implications for patients’ and clinicians’ decisions. A systematic review might lead to the wrong conclusions and, ultimately, the wrong clinical recommendations.”

Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Committee on Standards for Systematic Reviews of Comparative Effectiveness Research. (2011). Finding what works in health care: Standards for systematic reviews (J. Eden, L. Levit, A. Berg, & S. Morton, Eds.). Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. Chapter 3
Cochrane Handbook, Chapter 10 to learn about different types of reporting biases.
Bramer, W. M., Rethlefsen, M. L., Kleijnen, J., & Franco, O. H. (2017). Optimal database combinations for literature searches in systematic reviews: A prospective exploratory study. Systematic Reviews, 6. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-017-0644-y

Finding Existing Systematic Reviews

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Searching for existing systematic reviews on a topic related to your own research question can be a good place to start. These systematic reviews may provide a model for approaching your own review of the literature, including recommended search strategies and resources.

The following are links to online libraries of systematic reviews and evidence documents for health and other areas of policy-making.

Check the Search Strategy Used to Create the Systematic Reviews Subset on PubMed

3iE Database
International Impact for Impact Evaluations: for policymakers and researchers who are looking for evidence on what works, what doesn’t, and why in development.
BMC Systematic Reviews
Search the BioMed Central open access Systematic Reviews Journal for systematic reviews and protocols.
Campbell Collaboration
Published reviews and protocols by the Campbell Collaboration, which focuses on reviews outside of clinical medicine.
CareSearch Systematic Review Collection
To locate palliative care systematic reviews, non-comprehensive collection organized by subject.
Centre for Reviews and Dissemination
Systematic reviews of health and social care interventions and economic evaluations.
Centre of Evidence Based Dermatology
University of Nottingham created this resource to allow easy access to all systematic reviews for a given dermatological condition.
Cochrane Library
For published Cochrane systematic reviews.
The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence
The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) is an open community of scientists and managers working towards a sustainable global environment and the conservation of biodiversity.
The Community Guide
The Guide to Community Preventive Services is a free database of systematic reviews to help practitioners choose programs and policies to improve health and prevent disease in their community.
DoPHER: Database of Promoting Health Effectiveness Reviews
DoPHER is unique in its focussed coverage of systematic and non-systematic reviews of effectiveness in health promotion and public health worldwide.
Epistemonikos
An evidence library for decision in health care and health policy.
EPPI-Centre
The Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre) conducts systematic reviews in the fields of Education, Health Promotion and Public Health, as well as social welfare and international development.
FAIR-Finding Answers Intervention Research
Article summaries from systematic reviews of health disparities interventions.
HealthEvidence.org
For systematic reviews on public health interventions.
JBI Evidence Synthesis
For systematic reviews published by JBI.
McMaster Health Evidence
Must be a free registered user to access 4,742+ quality-rated systematic reviews evaluating the effectiveness of public health interventions.
PDQ Evidence for Informed Health Policymaking
PDQ (“pretty darn quick”) Evidence facilitates rapid access to the best available evidence for decisions about health systems. It includes systematic reviews, broad syntheses of reviews (including evidence-based policy briefs), primary studies included in systematic reviews and structured summaries of that evidence.
PROSPERO
A registry for prospective systematic reviews.
PubMed
A resource for finding systematic reviews provided by the National Library of Medicine including Cochrane's DARE database. Use "search term" AND "systematic review"[pt] to find systematic reviews in PubMed. Note: [pt] stands for "publication type."
SHARE
SHARE is a repository of HIV-related systematic reviews and provides a ‘one-stop shop’ for HIV-related information that has been published through a systematic review.
SRDR (Systematic Review Data Repository)
This resource serves as both an archive and data extraction tool in the production of systematic reviews. It is an open and searchable archive of systematic reviews and their data.
TRIP Database
A searchable evidence library--allows searching by PICO.
What Works Clearinghouse
Education Systematic Reviews

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Appraising Systematic Reviews

Just because a review has been published as a "systematic review", it does not imply that the review was rigorous, reproducible or exhaustive. There are a number of criteria by which you can assess the quality of a systematic review.

The following article summarizes 44 critical appraisal tools.

Crowe, M., & Sheppard, L. (2011). A review of critical appraisal tools show they lack rigor: Alternative tool structure is proposed. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 64(1), 79–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2010.02.008

Below are some common tools used for this purpose.

AMSTAR
A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews.
CASP
Critical Appraisal Skills Programme
EQUATOR
EQUATOR network listing over 300 sets of reporting guidelines. Click on any link in the first column.
GRADE
Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation
ROBIS
ROBIS is a new tool for assessing the risk of bias in systematic reviews (rather than in primary studies).
STROBE
STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology

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Database Syntax

Every database works differently. Consult with a librarian to 'translate' searches between databases. The link below provides some guidance for how to search using different platforms.

Database syntax guide - A guide to database syntax provided by the Effective Practice and Organization of Care Cochrane Review group (EPOC).

In addition to subject databases found in UMD Libraries' Database Finder list:

... consult the list of databases below for a more comprehensive search.

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How many and which databases to choose from?

The more resources, the better

There are systematic reviews in many subject areas such as education, social work, and even engineering where different databases are appropriate and very different conclusions would be reached. Some research is suggested below:

Agriculture: Ritchie, S.M., Young, L.M., & Sigman, J. (2018). A comparison of selected bibliographic database subject overlap for agricultural information. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, 89. http://www.istl.org/18-spring/refereed2.html
Education:
- Borrego, M., Foster, M. J., & Froyd, J. E. (2014). Systematic literature reviews in engineering education and other developing interdisciplinary fields. Journal of Engineering Education, 103(1), 45–76.
- Borrego, M., Foster, M. J., & Froyd, J. E. (2015). What is the state of the art of systematic review in engineering education? Journal of Engineering Education, 104(2), 212–242.
Engineering: Kitchenham, B. (2007). Guidelines for performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering. [Technical Report]. Keele, UK, Keele University, 33(2004), 1-26. - List of databases can be found on p. 17.
Health: Bramer, W. M., Rethlefsen, M. L., Kleijnen, J., & Franco, O. H. (2017). Optimal database combinations for literature searches in systematic reviews: A prospective exploratory study. Systematic Reviews, 6, 245. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-017-0644-y
Veterinary: Grindlay, D. J. C., Brennan, M. L., & Dean, R. S. (2012). Searching the veterinary literature: A comparison of the coverage of veterinary journals by nine bibliographic databases. Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, 39(4), 404–412. https://doi.org/10.3138/jvme.1111.109R

Suggested databases for different subject areas

Agriculture, food and nutrition

AGRICOLA Citations to journal articles, book chapters, monographs, conference proceedings, serials, technical reports, and other materials on a range of agricultural topics.
BIOSIS Previews (ISI) Provides access to the life sciences literature from more than 5,500 journals, books, conference proceedings, US patents, papers and posters, nomenclature rules, and taxanomic keys.
Web of Science This database includes: Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Emerging Sources Citation Index, Book Citation Index, and Conference Proceedings Citation Index.

Education

Education Source Around 1,800 journals (full-text) and over 550 books and monographs in the field of Education. Access to conference papers and indexing and abstracts from thousands of journals. Book reviews and article citations (roughly 5 million).
ERIC Provides access to information from over 1000 education and education-related journals as well as a variety of non journal materials, or ERIC documents. All aspects and levels of education. 1966- present. Non-journal documents are available via microfiche; they are also online from 1993-present. The database includes an online thesaurus.

Human health and medicine

CINAHL Plus with Full Text CINAHL Plus with Full Text is an online source for full text nursing and allied health journals, providing full text for more than 560 journals indexed in CINAHL. This database contains 600,000 full-text articles dating back to 1937, as well as searchable cited references, legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, drug records, research instruments and clinical trials. Covers nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative complementary medicine, consumer health and allied health disciplines. Time span: 1937-present. This database does not contain author first names. A search on 'Rice, Flora' will find records with 'Rice, F' or 'Rice, FM' in the author field. You can't type in 'Rice, Flora C'; you'll get zero hits.
MEDLINE Provides abstracts and indexing using Medical Subject Headings (MESH) for about 4,600 biomedical journals published in the U.S. and 70 foreign countries. Created by the United States National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE is an authoritative bibliographic database containing citations and abstracts for biomedical and health journals. Users can effectively search and retrieve information with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Covers the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, psychiatry, pre-clinical sciences, medical education and health care planning and administration of services. 1966- present. Do not attempt to search on authors by truncating the first name. Last, F? will often result in zero hits. Try searching on Last or Last, First There are no ISBNs in this database.
PubMed The National Library of Medicine's Medline database that provides abstracts and indexing for about 4,600 biomedical journals published in the U.S. and 70 foreign countries, and includes additional older citations and out of scope citations from Medline journals. Medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, psychiatry, pre-clinical sciences, medical education, public health, health care planning and administration of services. Also includes additional life science journals. mid-1960s - present

Kinesiology

SPORTDiscus with Full Text This database covers key areas of sports medicine and related fields. Content areas range from sports physiology and sports psychology to physical education and recreation. SPORTDiscus is ideal for researchers studying different aspects of kinesiology, fitness, health, and sport studies. Sports, recreation, physical fitness, and sport science. 1975-present with some monograph indexing dating back to 1800.

Organizational development, economics and policy

Business Source Complete Business Source Complete contains articles from thousands of newspapers, trade publications, such as the Harvard Business Review and other major key business magazines in all disciplines of business, including economics. Additional full text, non-journal content includes financial data, books, monographs, major reference works, book digests, conference proceedings, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses and more.
EconLit EconLit is a reliable source of citations and abstracts to economic research in over 400 books, journals, dissertations, and working papers. Provides comprehensive information on accounting, capital markets, econometrics, economic forecasting, government regulations, labor economics, monetary theory, urban economics. 1969 - present. Tip: Do not attempt to search on authors by truncating the first name. Last, F? will often result in zero hits. Try searching on Last or Last, First ISSNs and ISBNs are not searchable in this database.
PAIS Index From 1915 - Covers the world's public affairs, public and social policies, international relations, and world politics. Includes the policy oriented literature such as economics, finance, law, education, the military, political science, public administration, international law and relations, the environment, demography, public health and science and technology.

Psychology, human development and other social sciences

PsycINFO PsycINFO is the most comprehensive index in psychology and related fields, with more than 1.7 million citations and abstracts of journal articles, book chapters and books, technical reports, and dissertations. Its holdings include material from 1,700 periodicals in over 30 languages. Covering the entire range of psychology disciplines, PsycINFO also includes information about the psychological aspects of related fields such as psychiatry, neuroscience, medicine, sociology, education, linguistics, anthropology, business and law. PsycINFO spans 1887 to the present. PsycINFO has links to the full-text articles in PsycARTICLES and the Psychology and in the Behavioral Sciences Collection (thus the user does not have to search each of these databases separately).
SocIndex with Full Text The index features more than 1,300,000 records with subject headings from a 15,600 term sociology-specific thesaurus designed by expert lexicographers. This product also contains informative abstracts for more than 620 "core" coverage journals dating back to 1895. In addition, this file provides data mined from more than 500 "priority" coverage journals as well as over 1,390 "selective" coverage journals. Further, extensive indexing for books, monographs, conference papers, and other sources is included. Contains full text for 242 "core" coverage journals dating back to 1895, and 72 "priority" coverage journals. This database also includes full text for 547 books and monographs, and full text for 6,711 conference papers.

Reproductive health and women

GenderWatch Full text database comprised of 175 titles, primarily of the many ongoing periodicals that deal with gender issues, including academic and scholarly journals, regional publications, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, booklets and reports. Subject areas covered include: government, history and politics, lesbian and gay studies, women's studies, and other humanities and social sciences disciplines. Dates of coverage of some publications are 1970 to the present.

Sociology

Social Sciences Citation Index Problem description: Provides an index, abstracts, and cited references for articles in the social sciences. Covers anthropology, history, linguistics, philosophy, sociology, urban studies, women's studies, psychology, political science and other social sciences related fields. Provides some full-text materials.
SocIndex with Full Text The index features more than 1,300,000 records with subject headings from a 15,600 term sociology-specific thesaurus designed by expert lexicographers. This product also contains informative abstracts for more than 620 "core" coverage journals dating back to 1895. In addition, this file provides data mined from more than 500 "priority" coverage journals as well as over 1,390 "selective" coverage journals. Further, extensive indexing for books, monographs, conference papers, and other sources is included. Contains full text for 242 "core" coverage journals dating back to 1895, and 72 "priority" coverage journals. This database also includes full text for 547 books and monographs, and full text for 6,711 conference papers.

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This tab provides databases around the globe to find systematic reviews and other scholarly literature from national and international sources.

African Index Medicus
The World Health Organization, in collaboration with the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa (AHILA), produces this international index to African health literature and information sources.

China Academic Journals (CAJ) Full-text Database
CAJ is the most comprehensive full-text database of Chinese journals in the world. CAJ Series F, G, H, and J contain more than 4,400 journals. You can search the database to retrieve article titles and abstracts in English by clicking the drop-down on the top right and selecting "English," although all full text is in Chinese. The collection allows cross-searching multiple databases in the following subject areas: literature/history/philosophy (Series F), economics/politics/law (Series G), education/social sciences (Series H), and economics/management (Series J). Series F = 1994 through 4/15/2016Series G to J = 1994 through 12/31/2016

CiNii Articles (Scholarly Academic Information Navigator)
A database with a Japanese focus that can be used to search information on academic articles published in academic society journals, university research bulletins or articles included in the National Diet Library's Japanese Periodicals Index Database and databases.
Europe PMC
Europe PMC is a repository, providing access to worldwide life sciences articles, books, patents and clinical guidelines. Europe PMC provides links to relevant records in databases such as Uniprot, European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), Protein Data Bank Europe (PDBE) and BioStudies.
Index Medicus for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (IMEMR)
IMEMR one of the major projects of the Virtual Health Sciences Library (VHSL), was initiated in response to a pressing need to index health and biomedical journals from the region.
Index Medicus for the South-East Asian Region (IMSEAR)
IMSEAR is a database of articles published in selected journals within the WHO South-East Asia Region. It is a collaborative effort of participating libraries in Health Literature, Library and Information Services (HELLIS) network in the region.
Indian Medlars Centre
The purpose of IndMED is to index selected peer reviewed medical journals published from India. It supplements international indexing services like PubMed. It covers about 100 journals indexed from 1985 onwards.
Joanna Briggs Institute Library
The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Library is a repository for publications and information for policy makers, health professionals, health scientists and others with a practical or academic interest in evidence based healthcare.
KCl Korean Journal Database
The KCI Korean Journal Database provides a comprehensive
snapshot of the most influential regional content from researchers in South Korea.Using citation connections from the Web of Science™, regional work is framed within the broader context of global research.
LILACS
LILACS is an index of scientific and technical literature of Latin America and the Caribbean, for 31 years contributing to increase visibility, access and quality of health information in the Region.
OTseeker
OTseeker is a database that contains abstracts of systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials relevant to occupational therapy. Trials have been critically appraised and rated to assist you to evaluate their validity and interpretability.
Pedro
PEDro is the Physiotherapy Evidence Database. PEDro is a free database of over 26,000 randomised trials, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines in physiotherapy.
Russian Citation Index
Access bibliographic information and citations to scholarly articles from Russian researchers in over 500 science, technology, medical, and education journals. Leading publications have been carefully selected and provided by the Scientific Electronic Library (eLIBRARY.RU), Russia's largest research information provider.
SciELO: Scientific Electronic Library Online
A bibliographic database and digital library of open access journals with a focus on literature published in developing countries, primarily in South America.
Systematic reviews (journal)
The journal aims to publish high quality systematic review products including systematic review protocols, systematic reviews related to a very broad definition of health, rapid reviews, updates of already completed systematic reviews, and methods research related to the science of systematic reviews, such as decision modeling.
TRIP Database
The TRIP Database is a clinical search tool designed to allow health professionals to rapidly identify the highest quality clinical evidence for clinical practice. Advanced search allows searching using PICO framework. Registered users (registration is free) benefit from extra features such as CPD, search history, and collaborative tools.
USDA Nutrition Evidence Library (NEL)
USDA’s Nutrition Evidence Library (NEL) specializes in conducting systematic reviews to inform federal nutrition policy and programs.
Virginia Henderson Global Nursing e-Repository
This repository offers nurses around the globe, FREE online access to reliable nursing research and evidence-based knowledge. Browse items by "Level of Evidence" to find systematic reviews.
Virtual Health Library
Find more sources for Latin America and the Caribbean here, beyond LILACS and SciELO.
Western Pacific Region Index Medicus (WPRIM)
The goal of WPRIM is the creation of an online index of medical and health journals published in Member States of the WHO Western Pacific Region which can be accessed on the Internet thus ensuring global accessibility of medical and health research done in the region.

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What is grey literature?

Gray literature is defined by the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions as "...literature that is not formally published in sources such as books or journal articles." This can include information such as government reports, conference proceedings, graduate dissertations, unpublished clinical trials, and much more.

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Document your searches using the CADTH Grey Matters checklist, p. 3. It is a MS Word document where you fill in the blanks to say which website you searched, when you searched it, etc.

How to find grey literature?

Tips and tricks

Googling the Greys: Tips for Searching Beyond Health Databases and Turning Information into Insights - This presentation provides an excellent guide to searching Google effectively to find grey literature.

Comprehensive guides with resources

SuReInfo: Grey literature - This chapter discusses current evidence on health-related grey literature to inform systematic reviews and health technology assessments, including sources to search, designing search strategies, and search documentation and reporting. The most commonly used grey literature sources for systematic reviews are
Duke University Medical Center Guide to Resource for Searching the Gray Literature - A more thorough guide to grey literature, including resources for trial registries, pharmacological studies, conference abstracts, government documents, and more.
Discovery and scholarly communication aspects of preprints - An article describing the classification, purposes, and criticisms of preprints, and provides a list of pre-print repositories.

Free databases of grey literature

BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
CDC WONDER (Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research WONDER online databases utilize a rich ad-hoc query system for the analysis of public health data. Reports and other query systems are also available.
Center for Research Libraries Collections of newspapers, journals, dissertations, conference proceedings, archives, government publications, and other traditional and digital resources. Provides free access to their collection for member libraries.
CHBD: Circumpolar Health Bibliographic Database The CHBD describes publications about public health, medicine and human biology. All types of publications, both peer-reviewed and grey literature, are included. The CHBD covers the earth's northern circumpolar region. The geographic scope of the database is somewhat flexible, but includes Alaska, northern Canada (Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and the northern parts of seven provinces), Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, northern Norway (Troms, Nordland and Finnmark), northern Sweden (Norrbotten and Västerbotten), northern Finland (Lappi) and the northern part of the Russian Federation (Murmansk Oblast, Kareliya Republic, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Komi Republic, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Taymyr Autonomous Okrug, Evenki Autonomous Okrug, Sakha Republic, Magadan Oblast, Koryak Autonomous Okrug and Chukotka Autonomous Okrug).
Child Welfare Information Gateway
Community Health Improvement (CHI) Navigator The Tools for Successful Community Health Improvement (CHI) Efforts section is designed to help you organize your work for each part of the CHI process and connect you to targeted tools—including guidance, templates, or examples—to help you effectively incorporate key concepts and carry out your approach. This section is intended to serve as a starting point to determine what actions to take and how best to carry out the work. The tools mentioned in this section comprise a select, focused set to help achieve the key concepts.
CORE -- Aggregating the world's open access research papers "CORE’s mission is to aggregate all open access research outputs from repositories and journals worldwide and make them available to the public. In this way CORE facilitates free unrestricted access to research for all."
Cordis: Community Research and Development Information Service (European Union)
Directory of Open Access Journals
Disaster Lit Disaster Lit: Database for Disaster Medicine and Public Health is the National Library of Medicine (NLM) database of links to disaster medicine and public health documents available on the Internet at no cost. Documents include expert guidelines, research reports, conference proceedings, training classes, fact sheets, websites, databases, and similar materials for a professional audience. NLM selects materials from over 1,400 non-commercial publishing sources and supplements disaster-related resources from PubMed (biomedical journal literature) and MedlinePlus (health information for the public).
DORIS: Database of Research into Stroke asy access to: Current best evidence, including guidelines, systematic reviews and RCTs Ongoing research Priorities for future research
ETOH Database: National Institute on Alcohol and Alcoholism This is an archived edition of the ETOH Database (formal title: the Alcohol and Alcohol Problems Science Database) ("Database"). Developed in 1971 by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), ETOH became the premier alcohol database—comprehensive, multidisciplinary, indexed with the AOD Thesaurus terminology, and including a wide variety of materials. It was the major alcohol bibliographic resource for alcohol researchers, clinicians, and policy makers around the world. Support for ETOH ceased in 2003. Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is committed to preserving this rich and unique literature resource for both the addictions and information fields, and making it freely available to all online searchers. We encourage you to search its 130,000 records to create a bibliographic listing of your topic, and then to take that list to your own librarian/library for assistance in retrieval of the full documents.
Federal RePORTER
HSRProj
LILACS The most important and comprehensive database of LA&C with more than 880 thousand records of peer reviewed journals, thesis and dissertations, government documents, annals of congresses and books, published since 1982. It includes systematic reviews, randomized controlled clinical trials, evidence synthesis, health technology evaluation studies, economic evaluation studies, clinical practice guidelines, technical reports, case reports and others.
MedNar
medRxiv medRxiv (pronounced "med-archive") is a free online archive and distribution server for complete but unpublished manuscripts (preprints) in the medical, clinical, and related health sciences.
Minority Health and Health Equity Archive Welcome to the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive (MHHEA), an electronic archive for digital resource materials in the fields of minority health and health disparities research and policy. It is offered as a no-charge resource to the public, academic scholars and health science researchers interested in the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.
Native Health Database The Native Health Database contains bibliographic information and abstracts of health-related articles, reports, surveys, and other resource documents pertaining to the health and health care of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Canadian First Nations. The database provides information for the benefit, use, and education of organizations and individuals with an interest in health-related issues, programs, and initiatives regarding North American indigenous peoples.
NICHSR ONESearch: Federated search of all NICHSR databases (HSRProj, HSRR, HSRIC, PHPartners)
NIH RePORTER Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT)
NTRL National Technical Reports Library
NY Academy of Medicine Grey Literature Report This report is 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. The database platform is keyword searchable and serves as an archive for the cataloged reports.
OAIster Records for items in digital libraries, institutional repositories
OpenDOAR OpenDOAR is the quality-assured global directory of academic open access repositories. It enables the identification, browsing and search for repositories, based on a range of features, such as location, software or type of material held.
Opengrey System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe, is your open access to 700,000 bibliographical references of grey literature (paper) produced in Europe and allows you to export records and locate the documents. Examples of grey (gray) literature include technical or research reports, doctoral dissertations, some conference papers, some official publications, and other types of grey literature. The site includes preprints from the GL conferences (GreyNet International) in full text.
OpenMD OpenMD.com is a search engine that makes high-quality medical information easily accessible to everyone. OpenMD searches billions of documents from government agencies, global health organizations, medical journals, and reference sites.
Open Science Framework (OSF) Preprints OSF Preprints is able to cross-search OSF partner repositories, as well as several other repositories, including arXiv, bioRxiv, Cogprints, PeerJ, Preprints.org, and others. As of March 2018, the partner repositories hosted by OSF Preprints include AgriXiv, arabixiv, BITSS, Earth ArXiv, engrXiv, FocUS Archive, Frenxiv, INA-Rxiv, LawArXiv, LIS Scholarship Archive, MarXiv, MindRxiv, NutriXiv, Paleorxiv, PsyArXiv, SocArxiv, SportRxiv, and Thesis Commons.
Project Research Online: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Grants On-Line Database is a searchable database of AHRQ Grants, Working Papers and HHS Recovery Act Projects.
ROAR The aim of ROAR is to promote the development of open access by providing timely information about the growth and status of repositories throughout the world. Open access to research maximises research access and thereby also research impact, making research more productive and effective.
Science.gov
TRIP Database Trip is a clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care. Trip has been online since 1997 and in that time has developed into the internet’s premier source of evidence-based content. Our motto is ‘Find evidence fast’ and this is something we aim to deliver for every single search. As well as research evidence we also allow clinicians to search across other content types including images, videos, patient information leaflets, educational courses and news.
UK Government Publications
World Health Organization
WorldWideScience.org WorldWideScience.org is a global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals. WorldWideScience.org accelerates scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching of databases from around the world (Architecture: What is under the Hood). Multilingual WorldWideScience.org provides real-time searching and translation of globally-dispersed multilingual scientific literature.

Theses and dissertations

UMD restricted access

Dissertations & Theses Global This database is the an authoritative source for information about doctoral dissertations and master's theses. The database represents the work of authors from over 1,000 graduate schools and universities. Full text is available from 1997 to the present. It also contains a significant amount of new international dissertations and theses both in citations and in full text. It offers access to more than 90 percent of the doctoral dissertations accepted each year in North America. The database also covers thousands of dissertations and theses from around the globe. Time Span: 1861 to present.

International databases

AFRICA - African Index Medicus In order to give access to health information published in or related to Africa and to encourage local publishing, the World Health Organization ( WHO ), in collaboration with the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa (AHILA), has produced an international index to African health literature and information sources.
AFRICA - DATAD-R The collections under this community are from the African Higher Educational Institutions. They are made up of post graduate theses and dissertations submitted to the various universities on the continent.
AUSTRALIA - Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety Limited (ANROWS) he ANROWS library provides access to bibliographic records, as well as full-text access to a large collection of research papers, reports, and other resources in the family and domestic violence, and violence against women sector. The library is committed to providing open access research where possible, with aims to ensure that researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners have access to or information on research and resources that are relevant to their work in the prevention of violence against women.
AUSTRALIA - Informit's Health Collection
AUSTRALIA - Australasian Digital Theses (ADT) Australian theses are now searchable via the National Library of Australia’s Trove service. Trove is a free repository of Australian material, including almost a million Australian theses.
CANADA - Library and Archives Canada Theses Canada, launched in 1965 at the request of the deans of Canadian graduate schools, is a collaborative program between Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and nearly 70 universities accredited by Universities Canada.
CHINA, HONG KONG, and TAIWAN This list provides sources linking to to various databases in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and more.
EUROPE - DART-Europe E-Theses Portal Advanced search allows you to limit to a particular country, institution, year, or language. The earliest listed thesis year is 1597. There are nearly 66,000 theses and dissertations for the year 2012. The full text of some theses is available online.
GERMANY - Die Deutsche Bibliothek Database Die Deutsche Bibliothek Database contains 6.5 million records representing the holdings of the National Library of Germany, which, following the unification of Germany in October 1990, combines the Deutsche Bucherei Leipzig and the Deutsche Bibliothek Frankfurtam Main (including the Deutsche Musikarchiv Berlin). The library collects and catalogs all printed and electronic publications issued in Germany, published abroad in German, translated from German-language publications, and works in any language about Germany (Germanica). The records represent monographs, periodicals, microforms, dissertations, visual materials, maps, printed and recorded music, and electronic publications issued since 1945.
INDIA - Shodghanga @INFLIBNET The Shodhganga@INFLIBNET Centre provides a platform for research students to deposit their Ph.D. theses and make it available to the entire scholarly community in open access.
Open Access theses and dissertations OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 1100 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently indexes 4,477,322 theses and dissertations.
UNITED KINGDOM - British Library's EThOS service EThOS contains citations for over 480,000 UK dissertations and full-text access for over 100,000 titles. EBSCO's Open Dissertations database also has records from the British Library's EThOS service.
WHO IRIS database - Western Pacific Region

Conference Proceedings

BioMed Central - BMC Proceedings
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BIOSIS Previews
Limit to LITERATURE TYPE options: Meeting Abstract, Meeting Address, Meeting Paper, Meeting Poster, Meeting Report, Meeting Slide, Meeting summary
DOCUMENT TYPE options: Meeting Paper, Meeting
Conference Proceedings Citation Index, 1990-present
This index helps researchers access the published literature from the most significant conferences, symposia, seminars, and more.
MEDLINE
Limit to Publication Type: Congresses, Consensus development conference
PapersFirst
OCLC index of papers presented at conferences worldwide. Over 2,380,000 records. Covers every published congress, symposium, conference, exposition, workshop and meeting received by The British Library Document Supply Centre. Wide variety of subjects. Only one user allowed. 'Phrase' searches will find records with the words not necessarily next to each other. For example, a search on 'sunny day' might find 'the day was sunny'.
ProceedingsFirst
OCLC index of worldwide conference proceedings. Over 74,000 records. Each record contains a list of the papers presented at each conference. Covers every published congress, symposium, conference, exposition, workshop and meeting received by The British Library Document Supply Center. 1993- present. 'Phrase' searches will find records with the words not necessarily next to each other. For example, a search on 'sunny day' might find 'the day was sunny'.