Guides @ UF: Ophthalmology: Searching the Literature

Relevant Databases

Listed below are a few databases that might be useful when beginning your information search. For a more complete list, please see our page of Library Databases.

Searching the Literature for Research

PubMed
PubMed comprises more than 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
Embase
Embase is a biomedical and pharmacological bibliographic database, offering current citations and abstracts from a widespread of biomedical and drug literature. Highlights include the PICO search tool, which creates quick, comprehensive searches quickly.
Web of Science
Whether looking at data, books, journals, proceedings or patents, Web of Science provides a single destination to access the most reliable, integrated, multidisciplinary research.

Evidence-Based Practice

UpToDate
(VPN Access only off-campus)
UpToDate is an evidence-based, physician-authored clinical decision support resource which clinicians consult when making point-of-care decisions. An editorial team condenses the most recent medical information into evidence-based recommendations to improve patient care and quality.
Courtesy of the College of Medicine Office of Graduate Medical Education
AccessMedicine
AccessMedicine offers instant access to videos, self-assessment, an image library and leading medical textbooks that facilitate decision-making at the point-of-care to ensure the best patient outcome.
MICROMEDEX Healthcare Series
MICROMEDEX is an excellent source of drug indication, dosage, drug interaction and side effect information, as well as poison control information. It covers all FDA approved medications as well as a database of alternative medicines.

For additional databases provided by the Health Science Center Libraries, please refer to our Database List.

Databases Necessary for Evidence Synthesis Reviews

While the database requirements for systematic reviews and meta-analyses vary based on the focus of the research and the desired journal for publication, these are widely seen as the four key databases to include:

MEDLINE (PubMed)
Biomedical database from U.S. National Library of Medicine. PubMed comprises citations from MEDLINE, life science journals, and e-books, some links to full text content.
Embase
Embase is a biomedical and pharmacological bibliographic database, offering up-to-date citations and abstracts from a wide spread of biomedical and drug literature. There are some journals indexed in MEDLINE that are not indexed in Embase and vice versa, so it is important to include both MEDLINE and Embase to address database bias.
Cochrane Library
Cochrane includes both Cochrane Reviews and CENTRAL, a registry of clinical trials.
Web of Science
Web of Science is best for including conference proceedings; reviewing conference proceedings reduces publication bias.

It is highly recommended that you look at the requirements of the journal you wish to publish in to see their requirements for included databases and protocol reporting standards BEFORE you start your systematic review.

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