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Library Subject Guides

Health Sciences: Journal Articles

Key Databases


Other databases

- TRiP Database Medical search engine for evidence based medicine

- MedlinePlus Database of consumer health information

- COVID-19 Global literature on coronavirus disease A comprehensive database of health literature related to the COVID-19 pandemic compiled by WHO and Global Health

DigitalNZ Access to over 30 million digital items from NZ libraries, museums, govt depts, publicly funded organisations, media and community groups

Overton searchable index of policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications and working papers

Finding academic journal articles for your study

Academic journals (also called scholarly, peer-reviewed, or referred journals) are a useful source of articles written by people who are experts on the topic. Most articles go through a 'peer-review' process to ensure the quality of the article before it is published.

You can find articles written in academic journals by using MultiSearch, searching our Health Science databases, or Google Scholar.  If you are using Google Scholar, remember to change the settings so it links to what is held by the UC Library: Click the burger icon > Settings > Library links > enter University of Canterbury select and Save

Keeping Up-to-Date

Many databases have an auto alert function (for example, Medline, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, CINHAL and PsycINFO). When you save your search on the database, you will be notified by email when new records matching your search are added to the database. You can set the frequency of all search alerts. 

For key journals, go to the publisher's web site and set up a table-of-contents alert. Each time a new issue is published the table of contents will be emailed to you.

Journal abbreviations

To find out what journal title abbreviations stand for use this site:-

NLM Catalog: Journals referenced in the NCBI Databases

When searching in PubMed hold the cursor over the journal title abbreviation to find the full title.