Research Guides: Pinnacle Scholars: Healthcare: Literature Searching

Literature Searching: Where to Start

If you need…

then start with…

An overview of the literature on a topic

To learn more about a specific article

a CITATION INDEX

All Subjects: Scopus and Web of Science
Biomedical: PubMed
Chemical: SciFinder

The full text of a citation

Articles from a specific journal

a PUBLISHER DATABASE

Such as IEEE Xplore, ACS Publications, ScienceDirect

* Find these on the A-Z Databases list (log into Okta if prompted)

Looking for a specific journal?

Journal Finder
Use this tool to quickly find out if the library has access to a specific periodical.

CITATION INDEXES

Citation indexes help you find most of the articles published on a topic from a broad range of fields, regardless of publisher.

Citation indexes track how often papers are cited, and it is through this citation analysis that you can get a sense of what people have written and what, based on the citations, are considered foundational papers in the field.

PubMed is the best database for biomedical literature and SciFinder for chemistry/chemical information, but the general topic citation indexes Scopus and Web of Science are helpful for all disciplines.

PubMed
PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine, is an open access database of citations and abstracts for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, the premier database of the National Library of Medicine, and additional life science journals.
SciFinder
SciFinder, from the American Chemical Society's Chemical Abstracts Service, is a portal for chemistry and chemistry-related information and research, providing access to chemical substances, sequences, and reactions as well as scholarly journal and patent references. First-time users need to register: Register here.
Scopus
Scopus is a citation index from the publisher Elsevier and includes journals and other sources from scientific and technical disciplines, medicine, social sciences, and the arts and humanities.
Web of Science
Web of Science is a citation index from a company called Clarivate Analytics and contains journals and other sources from in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.

MORE INFORMATION

PubMed
by Vicky Orlofsky Last Updated Jun 23, 2025 1108 views this year
Citation Indexes: Scopus & Web of Science
by Vicky Orlofsky Last Updated Jun 2, 2025 1493 views this year

FULL-TEXT DATABASES

These subscription databases have a strong focus in healthcare and biomedical issues.

Note: log into Okta if prompted.

Publisher Databases

Annual Reviews
Annual Reviews volumes are published each year for more than 41 focused disciplines within the biomedical, life, and physical sciences, and the social sciences including economics.
IEEE Xplore
IEEE Xplore is a full-text scholarly and technical database from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, covering electrical engineering, electronics, and computer science. Its content includes journals, conference proceedings, magazines, newsletters, courses, and IEEE standards, with some content dating back to 1872.
ScienceDirect
ScienceDirect provides full-text access to journal articles, book chapters and supplementary data published by Elsevier. Topics covered include scientific, technical, and medical research including physical sciences, engineering, life sciences, health sciences, social sciences and humanities.
SpringerLink
SpringerLink is a publisher database that contains full-text access to journals and books in subjects including science, engineering, technology, humanities and law.
Wiley Online Library
Wiley Online Library is a publisher database that contains a large collection of online journals, books, and research resources which cover life, health, social, and physical sciences.

Subject Database

ProQuest Central
ProQuest Central provides access to a vast array of scholarly journals, popular magazines and newspapers from all over the world through databases including News & Newspapers, ABI/INFORM, Ebook Central, and many more. Recommended for all subjects.

Pinnacle Scholars: Healthcare