User:Mathglot/sandbox/Drafts/Using medical database collections

Wikipedia includes many pages containing biomedical content. Information about identifying reliable sources for such content can be found at Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine). This page provides some methods and resources for using medical database collections in order to find and evaluate reliable sources for biomedical information.

Background

The Wikipedia guideline on Identifying reliable sources on bio medical content supports the general sourcing policy with specific attention to what is appropriate for medical content in any Wikipedia article. This

Ideal sources for biomedical information include: review articles (especially systematic reviews) published in reputable medical journals; academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant fields and from respected publishers; and guidelines or position statements from national or international expert bodies. Primary sources should generally not be used for medical content – as such sources often include unreliable or preliminary information, for example early lab results which don't hold in later clinical trials.

Besides general search engines like Google and Bing, there are many specialized search engines available which have searchable collections of scholarly journals or other content. Google scholar is perhaps the best known of these, but there are many others, and some may be suitable for searching for reliable sources for biomedical content. However like Google, all search engines return algorithmic results based on published documents, and they are not curated for adherence to Wikipedia's guidelines on biomedical content. Individual collections have their strong and weak points, and indiviual documents returned by search need to be vetted like any other source for compliance.

Searchable collections with biomedical content

This section lists database collections which may contain reliable sources for certain queries. They are all searchable, and each has their own algorithm for returning results deemed most relevant for the user query. Most will return a mix of results from primary and other sources; as noted above, primary sources are generally not usable for verifying biomedical content. The fact that a collection is included below is not an endorsement, and not every search result for even the best collections is usable; in each case, a resource returned by a search should be evaluated against the criteria of the reliable sources for biomedical content.

abbr	Name	Ex	Scope	Remarks
Cochrane	Cochrane Library	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	Lit surveys and systematic reviews	Long_remarks_here_Cochrane
DOAJ	Directory of Open Access Journals	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	Directory of Open Access Journals	Long_remarks_here_DOAJ
Gale	Gale Academic OneFile	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	Academic publisher portal	Long_remarks_here_Gale
scholar	Google scholar	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	academic papers and other scholarly research	Long_remarks_here_scholar
books	Google books	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	published books	Long_remarks_here_books
JSTOR	JSTOR	Influenza Influenza vaccine	academic journals	Long_remarks_here_JSTOR
OpenMD	OpenMD	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	medical documents from government, global health organizations, medical journals, and reference sites	Long_remarks_here_OpenMD
PubMed	PubMed	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	National Center for Biotechnology Information from the NIH	Long_remarks_here_PubMed
ScienceDirect	ScienceDirect	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	Elsevier's scientific, technical, and medical research portal	Long_remarks_here_ScienceDirect
Springer	Springer	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	Nature's portal for journals, books, and reference works	Long_remarks_here_Springer
Trip	Trip Database	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	clinical research evidence	Long_remarks_here_Trip
Wiley	Wiley Online Library	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	Wiley's portal for academic articles, books, and collections.	Long_remarks_here_Wiley
GIN	Guidelines International Network	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	Content from the library and registry of guidelines in development.	Long_remarks_here_GIN
WP Library	Wikipedia Library	giardiasis Influenza vaccine	Academic content from dozens of partners of Wikipedia.	Long_remarks_here_WP_Library

Evaluating and comparing collections

This section contains tips and advice on how to decide which database collections are likely to have the best results for the article or topic you are researching.

Evaluating sources from search results

Further information: Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)

This section explains how to evaluate sources returned in the search results for a given collection to identify if it is WP:MEDRS-compliant.

See also

• WP:MEDRS
• Wikipedia:Biomedical information
• Wikipedia:Plain and simple guide for medical editors
• List of academic databases and search engines
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-30/Dispatches
• WP:LORD
• Medical literature retrieval

Notes

Lock icons:

• Free:
• Free reg:
• Free trial:
• Paid sub:
• yellow-alt-3:
• More: c:Category:Open access logos and banners, c:Category:SVG_padlock_icons