Guides: Global Health: Databases

Core databases - free

Embase Classic + Embase (Ovid)
Embase Classic 1947-1973.
Global Index Medicus (World Health Organization)
Provides worldwide access to biomedical and public health literature produced by and within low-middle income countries.
Google Scholar
PubMed (McGill)
Contains 37 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full text content from PubMed Central, publisher web sites and to the McGill Find Full Text linkresolver.

Core databases - subscription required

Global Health (Current + Archive, 1910-) (Ovid)
public health, tropical and communicable diseases, nutrition, helminthology, entomology and mycology in several languages
Web of Science Core Collection (All Indexes)
Interdisciplinary covering Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM; useful when searching for articles citing an article
Scopus (Elsevier)
Interdisciplinary covering all branches of sciences; useful for searching for articles citing an article you already have

Additional databases - free

BELIT (bioethics literature database)
Bioethics database providing access to records from the integrated German, American and French databases. Contains references to monographs, grey literature, legal documents, journal articles, newspaper articles and book contributions. Database access via ETHICSWEB or producer’s website. English or German interface available.
Developed by the German Reference Centre for Ethics in the Life Sciences (DRZE, Bonn) and operated in co-operation with the Information and FDocumentation Centre on Ethics in Medicine (IDEM, Göttingen), the International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW, Tübingen), the Bioethics Research Library at Georgetown University (Kennedy Institute of Ethics (KIE), Washington, DC) and the Centre de documentation en éthique (CDE, Comité consultatif national d'éthique, Paris).
ERIC - Education Resources Information Center (USDE)

Health Evidence
Includes quality appraisals on peer reviewed, published evidence syntheses evaluating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of public health interventions. Database maintained by the National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools (NCCMT), Canada.
Health Systems Evidence
Evidence to support policymakers, stakeholders and researchers interested in how to strengthen or reform health systems or in how to get cost-effective programs, services and drugs to those who need them. An initiative of the Health Systems Forum, McMaster University, Canada.

Additional databases - subscription required

AGRICOLA (Ovid)
Produced by the National Agricultural Library (NAL). Contains bibliographic records of materials acquired by the NAL and cooperating institutions in agricultural and related sciences. Coverage includes: agricultural administration, laws and regulations, economics, education, training and extension, engineering and products; animal science; aquatic sciences; chemistry; energy as related to agriculture; entomology; feed science; food science and food products; forestry; general agriculture; geography, meteorology, climatology and history; home economics and human ecology; human nutrition; institutional food service; life sciences; natural resources management and environmental pollution; pesticides; plant diseases; plant science and production; rural sociology; soil science; veterinary medicine. Coverage: 1970 - present
Agricultural & Environmental Science Collection (ProQuest)
Technological and engineering aspects of air, water and soil quality, environmental safety, sustainability and energy production.
Library can facilitate negotiating text-mining rights for this database for McGill faculty and students wishing to acquire the rights with their own research funds. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
CAB Abstracts
10 simultaneous users.
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A bibliographic database compiled by CAB INTERNATIONAL. It covers the significant research and development literature in the fields of agriculture, forestry, human health and nutrition, animal health, and the management and conservation of natural resources. Over three million records have been added to the database since its computerization in 1973. These records are made available through a wide range of products and services both printed and electronic
CINAHL Plus with Full Text (EBSCO)
Full text database in the areas of nursing and allied health journals. Contains approximately 770 journals from the CINAHL index with coverage back to 1937.
FSTA® -the food science resource (Web of Science)
Pure and applied research in food science, food technology, and food-related nutrition.

(1969-present)

Health Indicators tabulates key health and administrative data at both the federal and provincial levels.

HealthSTAR (Ovid)
Note: Starting in 2000, only journal articles have been added to HealthSTAR. For help searching the health services literature, see: 1) PubMed Health Services Research Queries and 2) US National Library of Medicine's Health Services Research and Public Health Information Programs

International Development Research Centre Digital Library - Well indexed collection of documents covering international development including health

MEDLINE (OVID) ALL, 1946-
Ovid MEDLINE® covers the international literature on biomedicine, including the allied health fields and the biological and physical sciences, humanities, and information science as they relate to medicine and health care.
PAIS Index (ProQuest)
Formerly PAIS International. Global public policy and social issues
PEN : Practice-based Evidence in Nutrition
TOXLINE (ProQuest)
This database, produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, provides bibliographic citations and abstracts from the core journal literature in all areas of toxicology, including chemicals and pharmaceuticals, pesticides, environmental pollutants and mutagens and teratogens. Coverage: 1999 - current. Library can facilitate negotiating text-mining rights for this database for McGill faculty and students wishing to acquire the rights with their own research funds. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Environmental Science Index (was Water Resources Abstracts) (ProQuest)
Provides in-depth A&I coverage from the environmental science literature and related disciplines. Abstracts and citations are drawn from thousands of peer-reviewed journals, trade titles, conference proceedings, dissertations, and other varied content types. Includes access to TOXLINE. Coverage: 1960 - current. - Library can facilitate negotiating text-mining rights for this database for McGill faculty and students wishing to acquire the rights with their own research funds. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub

International databases - free

African Index Medicus (AIM) - Can also be searched through Africa-Wide Information on EBSCOhost (under Search Options, select Data Contributor: African Index Medicus)
African Journals Online (AJOL) - Can also be searched through Africa-Wide Information on EBSCOhost (under Search Options, select Data Contributor: African Journals Online). Regarding the importance of searching AJOL for Sub-Saharan African health sciences literature, see: Asubiaro TV. Sub-Saharan Africa's biomedical journal coverage in scholarly databases: a comparison of Web of Science, Scopus, EMBASE, MEDLINE, African Index Medicus, and African Journals Online. Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA. 2023;111(3):696-702.

CNKI
Chinese journals, dissertations/theses, e-books, newspapers, and conference papers
FAO Knowledge Repository
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nation's official open repository

HAPI online
Search the Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) for journal article citations about Latin America, the Caribbean, and Hispanics/Latinos in the US

Index Medicus for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (IMEMR) - Select IMEMR from drop-down; can also be searched through the World Health Organization Global Index Medicus
Index Medicus for South-East Asia (IMSEAR) - Can also be searched through the World Health Organization Global Index Medicus

LILACS (Virtual Health Library)
Latin American and Caribbean health sciences literature. Includes records of peer reviewed journals, theses and dissertations, government documents, conference proceedings, books, and more. Recommended by Cochrane.

LIVIVO
German search portal for life sciences

International databases - subscription required

American Bibliography of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies - ABSEES (EBSCO)
Produced by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, provides information on East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Coverage for ABSEES ranges from 1989 to the present.
Africa-Wide Information (EBSCO)
Produced by NISC South Africa, this resource combines bibliographic databases from around the world to form a multidisciplinary aggregation of extensive coverage of all facets of Africa and African studies. Contains 3.2 million citations and abstracts dating back to the 16th century.
Bibliography of Asian Studies (EBSCO)
Bibliographic database covering principally the areas of humanities and the social sciences on the East, Southeast, and South Asia. Abstracts published worldwide from 1971 to present.
Index Islamicus (Brill)
KCI-Korean Journal database (Web of Science)
Research literature from South Korea. Subject coverage includes Arts & Humanities, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Physical Sciences, Social Sciences, and Technology.
Data is searchable in Korean and English.
(1980-present)
PRISMA Database with Hapi Index (ProQuest)
Provides the full text of many scholarly journals in the social sciences and humanities for the interdisciplinary academic study of Hispanic and Latin America and the Caribbean Basin.
Library can facilitate negotiating text-mining rights for this database for McGill faculty and students wishing to acquire the rights with their own research funds. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
SciELO Citation Index (Web of Science)
Access to scholarly literature in sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities published in open access journals from Latin American, Portugal, Spain and South Africa.

(1997-present)