Getting Full Text
Some databases will have the full text of the entire article available within the database, others will only have a citation for the article. When there is only a citation available, you will see a yellow find it button
(not in PubMed- PubMed is a freely available government-sponsored resource). This button will give you options for getting a full text version of the article. If we have access to it in another database it will be linked there.
If it says "Not Available Online" then look for "Check Availability in SU Catalog"; if you see that then we may have a hardcopy version on the shelf in the library.
If you don't have either of those options then you can request it through Interlibrary Loan (ILL). With ILL, the library finds the article you need AT NO EXTRA COST TO YOU. When we find it (usually within 1-3 days), you'll receive an email with access information.
If you have never used ILL before, follow the ILL tutorial to learn more and register for an account.
What's the deal with PubMed?
PubMed is a great resource, in that it provides up-to-date information on all health-related research being published. That said, be aware that it is an index and not a full-text database. While some articles will be freely available via a full-text PDF link that says Free PMC Article (or something similar), many will not and you will need to seek them out via Interlibrary Loan. If you have any questions, contact Emily Zerrenner.
Database searching
- CINAHL Plus with Full Text This link opens in a new windowCINAHL Plus® with Full Text is a comprehensive source of full text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 770 journals indexed in CINAHL®. CINAHL Plus with Full Text is the definitive research tool for all areas of nursing and allied health literature.
- MEDLINE with Full Text (EBSCO) This link opens in a new windowContains articles on a broad range of medical topics relating to research, clinical practice, administration, policy issues, and health care services. Most articles are available full text.
- APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new windowAPA 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.
- PubMed This link opens in a new windowThe National Library of Medicine's Medline database that provides abstracts and indexing for over 5,000 biomedical journals published in the U.S. and 70 foreign countries, and includes additional older citations and out of scope citations from Medline journals.
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new windowScienceDirect's Freedom Collection includes extensive full-text journal coverage of the physical and biological sciences, as well as some coverage of the social sciences and humanities. For a LIMITED TIME, Elsevier is making all of their textbooks available at no charge, as well as 20,000 free articles.
- SPORTDiscus This link opens in a new windowSPORTDiscus contains mostly full-text coverage for sports and sports medicine journals covering areas of fitness, health and sport studies.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowThe Web of Science Core Collection provides seamless access to the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, the Emerging Sources Citation Index, Science Citation Index Expanded, and the Social Sciences Citation Index. It enables users to search current and retrospective multidisciplinary information from thousands of the most prestigious, high impact research journals in the world. Web of Science also provides cited reference searching. With it, users can navigate forward, backward, and through the literature, searching all disciplines and time spans to uncover all the information relevant to their research. Users can also navigate to electronic full-text journal articles. Hosted content includes MEDLINE (back to 1950) and these regional collections: SciELO Citation Index, KCI-Korean Journal Database, and the Russian Science Citation Index.
Advanced Search Strategies
BOOLEAN OPERATORS (Connector Words)
These terms (AND, OR, NOT) can help you broaden or narrow the results you receive when searching within the databases.
- AND narrows your search, as it tells the database that you only want results that contain ALL of the search terms
- OR expands your search, as it tells the database that you want all the articles that contain EITHER of the terms
- NOT excludes items from your search, as it tells the database that you do not want any articles that contain a certain term
For more information on these strategies, visit this guide from the Priddy Library.
TRUNCATION
Using the * (asterisk symbol), truncation uses the root of a word to find results that contain any variation of the root.
- Example: pharm* will find pharmacology, pharmacy, pharmaceutical, etc.
- Example: injur* will find injury, injuries, etc.
For more information on these strategies, visit this guide from the Priddy Library.
Unlike keywords, Subject Headings are the major content in the article; they're also called "controlled vocabulary." A search on the topic altitude training as a keyword may retrieve some articles with 'altitude,' some with 'training' and some with the phrase 'altitude training.' But if the subject heading is 'altitude training' then the article is focused on that topic. Your search may be much broader retrieving more articles with keywords, but in searching with subject headings, you are likely to get fewer but more precise results. Subject headings are also referred to as 'descriptors' in some databases.
More specifically, PubMed and MEDLINE utilize Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), a controlled vocabulary created by the National Library of Medicine.
Thesaurus
Some databases have a thesaurus - a powerful collection of subject headings or standardized terms created by the indexers. Controlled vocabulary provides more effective searching capability in databases where a thesaurus is available. For example you may think of the word 'substance abuse,' but the database thesaurus indexes it as 'drug abuse.'
Use the thesaurus to find keywords and phrases and apply these search terms in the subject field (SU or DE). The results may be better for searches of thesaurus terms in the subject field than for a simple keyword search of the title or abstract of an article.
Make sure to consult the following thesauri when searching these databases:
MEDLINE- MeSH terms (Medical Subject Heading)
CINAHL - subject headings
PsycINFO - thesaurus from APA