Finding Professional Medical Articles: Finding articles

This guide offers two strategies for finding articles. 

1. Using research databases to search for articles by keyword or subject.

2. Browsing through specific journals..

1. Identify the key concepts related to your topic.
2. Combine key concepts using  Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT.
3. Put quotes around short phrases that represent a single concept-- e.g."bipolar disorder."
4. Use truncation to search for words with the same root-- e.g.patholog*
5. Evaluate search results to identify new search terms.
6. Refine your search.
7. Perform new searches. 

Research databases are online tools you can use to search for articles. Many provide full-text of the articles.  You can read, download, print, or e-mail articles directly from the computer. 

Recommended databases for this assignment include the ones listed on the tabs to the right of this one.  . 

To find out whether full-text copies are available online, look for the HTML or PDF full-text links or use the Find It! link. 

The FindIt link also provides information about library print holdings and includes a link for requesting copies of articles not available online.

Google Scholar  uses the familiar , easy-to-use Google search interface to search "scholarly" web sites and online information sources. It can quickly provide scholarly information with relatively little time and effort. 

Google Scholar provides free access to some full-text resources. Before purchasing any other resources through publishers' web sites, etc. check to see if full-text is available for free through the Research Databases.