LibGuides: Health: Journal Databases

Why use Journals and Databases?

It is important to scan key journals in your subject area to keep up to date.

It's really important in the Health and Social Care field to find good quality, up to date literature and evidence!

To search the literature in a comprehensive and structured way, you should use the databases that are relevant to your subject.

The links to the most relevant databases for health research are in the Journal Databases tab. You can find more help and support on using the databases effectively in the section in this guide.

This is a useful reading list for getting started on research in Healthcare.
Finding the literature.
To move to the relevant sections, click on the links on the left hand side of this page (in blue) which will take you to that section.

Subject Librarian Support.

Literature searching is a key skill for students on Health courses. We know it can be quite daunting to remember all of the information you are told in the literature searching sessions and that you may need a little extra help.

If you need help with your assignments finding articles and resources, click on the link above and contact Hallam Help. We can provide support remotely with finding resources for your academic work. Please try to give as much detail about what help you need as you can, such as your topic and where you have searched for resources.

Get in touch with us.

Getting started with databases: quick video guides

In order to find the best quality literature and evidence for your studies, you need to know how to use the databases.

The three minute videos below introduce you to some of the key databases for your subject areas, and some of the functions they contain.

For help on how to create effective search strategies, including using Boolean searching and other techniques, please see the section 'Finding the Literature' in this guide.

Introduction to CINAHL
Using CINAHL Headings
Supplements the Level 5 Library content for the Evidence Based Care module.
Introduction to PsycINFO
Introduction to SCOPUS
Basic Search in PsycInfo
How to do a basic search in the Proquest databases.
Advanced Search PsycInfo
How to use the advanced features in Proquest databases.

Key databases for Allied Health Professions

The databases in this list contain Health research and related research areas (such as Nursing and Social Care).

They index thousands of journal articles in these disciplines and may also link to the article full text. The descriptions below each database detail the coverage of that database.

It is a good idea to read these to see if that particular database is of use to your research.

For more help on creating an effective search strategy to use in the databases, see the 'Finding the Literature' section of this guide.

MEDLINE (Ebsco) This link opens in a new window
This database covers biomedical and technical health research, such as medical technology, decision-making and policy guidance, and the health care system. The database contains both primary and secondary research papers, including peer-review articles, randomised control trials and other research methodologies.
Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from over 4,800 current biomedical journals. Included are citations from Index Medicus, International Nursing Index, Index to Dental Literature, HISTLINE, SPACELINE, PREMEDLINE, AIDSLINE, BIOETHICSLINE, and HealthSTAR.
Cross search available with all EBSCO databases, select Choose Databases and tick those you wish to add to your search.
CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new window
This database contains resources covering areas such as patient-professional relationships, communication, staff development and professional issues. It's useful for Allied Health Professionals looking for resources to support research in these areas. It includes both primary and secondary research, including peer-review articles and other research methodologies.
Coverage is from 1937 onwards and also includes books, nursing dissertations, conference proceedings and standards of practice.Cross search available with all EBSCO databases, select Choose Databases and tick those you wish to add to your search.
APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
This database is published by the American Psychological Associations and provides comprehensive indexing and abstracts of the international psychological literature from the 1800s to the present. Documents indexed include journals, articles, books, dissertations and more. 90% of the 3,000+ titles indexed in APA PsycINFO® are peer-reviewed.

Coverage: 1806 - current
SPORTDiscus This link opens in a new window
This database covers sport and related disciplines. It is useful for such subjects as injury management and rehabilitation from injury. It includes both primary and secondary research, peer-review articles and other research methodologies.
It has over 1,500,000 records, including journal articles, books, dissertations and theses. In some cases coverage goes back to 1939.
An increasing percentage of the material is full text.
Cross search available with all EBSCO databases, select Choose Databases and tick those you wish to add to your search.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed is a key Allied Health database, with coverage from the 1950's on. It's content covers all Health subjects and some of the content is Open Access and free to view.
PLEASE NOTE: From 1st June 2022 NCBI will be changing the way in which you log into your account in their systems. If you have an NCBI account you will need to update it to switch logging in over to a 3rd party options. Instructions on how to do this and additional information on this change can be found on their website: https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ncbi-login-retirement-faqs/#linking-3rd
At this time, Sheffield Hallam University has not enabled 3rd party login via institution, a separate 3rd party login would be required.
PubMed is a search tool to access citations, abstracts and links to full-text journals at web sites of participating publishers. Including over 15 million citations from journals and covers 4,800 biomedical science journals.

Multidisciplinary databases with Allied Health content

It may be that you need to widen your net to find more articles and evidence for your studies.

The databases in this list cover lots of different disciplines, not exclusive to health research, although many contain Health and Social Care content. They index thousands of journal articles and may also link to the full text.

SCOPUS and Web of Science are also citation databases, which may help you to track down related research to your area of study.

For more information on citation searching (or pearl growing / snowballing as it may also be known), see the section 'Finding the Literature' in this guide.

SCOPUS This link opens in a new window
Scopus is a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary abstract and database curated by subject matter experts. Scopus is also a citation index, which means that the records in the database contain information on citations made in that publication and it links that information so you can identify which publications have cited that one, and how many times a publication has been cited.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
ScienceDirect provides journal articles and eBooks on the physics, engineering, mathematics, life sciences, health, computing and social sciences. The default search includes both ebooks and journal articles. You can use filters in your results to select between them: alternatively, you can use the search tab. Search results for eBooks are at chapter level.
Alternative link via Shibboleth
Articles and eBooks can be downloaded, saved permanently and kept as PDFs that you can view offline.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Web of Science provides access to a collection of databases. The default search is of the Web of Science Core Collection, which includes the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Conference Proceedings Citation Index and Emerging Sources Citation Index. This enables you to search scholarly journals, books and proceedings in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities and navigate the citation network.
By clicking on the drop-down menu next to ‘Search in:’ you can choose to search other databases: BIOSIS Citation Index (1969-2008), KCI-Korean Journal Database, Medline, Preprint Citation Index and SciELO Citation Index.
Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts (ASSIA) This link opens in a new window
Index and abstracts for health, social services, psychology, criminology, sociology, economics, politics, race relations and education. Currently contains over 312,000 records from 650 journals in 16 different countries, including the UK and US. Coverage is from 1987 onwards. Updated monthly, with more than 1500 records added per update.
Proquest Central This link opens in a new window
A multi-disciplinary full text database covering business, health and medical, social sciences, education , science and technology, including core titles in the performing and visual arts, history, religion, philosophy, and language and literature. It includes both scholarly journals as well as market research and industry reports, working papers and full-text dissertations.
IEEE Xplore This link opens in a new window
IEEE Xplore provides access to the collection of electrical engineering, electronics and computer science journals and conferences published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). The database also includes all active standards from the IEEE.
IEEE Xplore
In the database IEEE Xplore there are now over 3.8 million articles on computing related topics. There are thousands of early access articles that you can only find by searching IEEE Xplore (not by searching through Google Scholar or Library Search).
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar is a search engine that covers scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. You can use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, as well as scholarly articles available from across the web.
Be aware that Google scholar will find results from sources that SHU does not subscribe to so you may not automatically be able to get full text online. You can take advantage of the SHU subscriptions by going to Scholar Preferences and adding Sheffield Hallam University when prompted for a library name. This will add a SHU Links link to your Google Scholar searches which will identify what you can get via SHU subscriptions. However, we still advise that you access Google Scholar via Library Gateway as this will give you access to the full range of subscribed resources.

Management and Market Research databases

The Management databases have content which includes managing in the Health sector, useful if you are looking at topics around staff development and management within and of the Health Service.

The market research databases will be useful to anyone studying Dietetics, for your product development assessments.

Business, Management and Marketing
More management databases can be found on the Management subject guides.
Food and Nutrition
More databases covering this content can be found on the Food and Nutrition subject guide.

Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
Full text coverage of trade and academic journals covering all business disciplines, including marketing, management, accounting, finance and economics. Also includes industry and company profiles and SWOT analyses, country economic data and market research.
Emerald Insight This link opens in a new window
Access to subscribed journals and eBooks published by Emerald. Subject coverage: business, management, marketing, retailing, economics, education, engineering and library and information science.
British Education Index This link opens in a new window
Information on research, policy and practice in education and training in the UK. Particular strengths include aspects of educational policy and administration, evaluation and assessment, technology and special educational needs.
Content is included from over 250 English language periodicals published in the British Isles and in certain internationally published periodicals. Subject coverage includes : Cognitive development,Computer assisted learning, Curriculum, Educational policy,Educational psychology,Educational technology, Language acquisition, Training,Management in education, Multicultural education, Physical education, Science education, Special educational needs, Teacher education, Vocational education.
ERIC This link opens in a new window
The ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to provide extensive access to educational-related literature.
ERIC, the Education Resource Information Center, provides access to education literature and resources. The database contains more than 1.3 million records and provides access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index."
Education databases from ProQuest This link opens in a new window
We are experiencing problems with this collection of databases. If your search produces an error message, click the back button and scroll down to select from the list of individual database
Search five education databases together covering all aspects of education. Contains 5 databases: Australian Education Index ; Education database ; ERIC search ; Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) ; Sports Medicine and Education Index
Mintel Academic Reports This link opens in a new window
Mintel is a leading name in Market Research, the Library provides access to reports published in the last two years for leading UK industries including: Technology, Media, Household Care, Health and Wellbeing, Food and Drink, Beauty and Personal Care, Automotive.
The Library subscription also covers Mintel Market Sizes which provides global market data such as market size, market share, market forecasts and segmentation.
Marketline Advantage This link opens in a new window
Marketline Advantage provides quality information on industries, countries and companies and is updated daily. It has interactive reports and databases and is ideal for understanding companies and sectors.

Research databases

Dimensions This link opens in a new window
What is Dimensions Plus?
Dimensions Plus is a multi-disciplinary, next generation database with some unique features including:
• one-click access to full texts of articles
• search across over 128 million publications
• search across grants, publications, policy documents, clinical trials and patents
• explore the connections between the different publication types
• explore research analytics such as citation counts, altmetrics and analytical views
• unique search functions including abstract searching

Using Dimensions
This short video shows you how to use Dimensions.
National Research Register
The National Research Register (NRR) is now archived and comprises research projects funded by, or of interest to, the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) up to and including 2010. Please enquire at the National Institute for Health Research for current research activity.

Research in practice for adults This link opens in a new window
Supporting evidence informed practice with adults and families. Academic research, practice expertise to enable professionals across the sector to make evidence-informed decisions about the design and delivery of Adults’ Services.
You will need to create your own account, using your SHU email address.
Research in practice for children This link opens in a new window
Please register with your Sheffield Hallam University email when you use this site for the first time to gain access.This resource brings together research and practitioner expertise to support evidence-informed practice. Professionals at all levels with benefit from a wide range of resources and learning material.