When searching for scholarly journal articles, among other publication types, for your research and assignments we recommend the databases listed below. You can use ‘Library Search’ to search across multiple resources and databases simultaneously but using these individual databases will help you focus your search to the most relevant literature. It will also allow you to take advantage of some of the unique search features of each database.
We've listed the main 'disciplinary' specific databases which focus on a particular subject area as well as some 'multi-disciplinary' databases which allow you to search across multiple disciplines/subject areas.
Want to browse a particular journal? Our Journal Finder tool is an excellent tool to see the range of journals we have in psychology (expand 'social sciences' to see psychology journals.
Indexing for approximately 3,000 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health. In addition, this database offers access to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, educational software, audiovisuals and book chapters. Full text of approx 750 journals, plus legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, drug records, research instruments and clinical trials.
E-tutorials: CINAHL Headings Tutorial | CINAHL Basic Searching | CINAHL Advanced Features | EBSCO Library Guide
The essential research database for nursing and allied health studies, CINAHL Ultimate provides fast and easy access to top journals (over 3,000 journals), evidence based care sheets, quick lessons and continuing education modules. You can access content covering all nursing and allied health specialties.
Developed by the National Library of Medicine in the US, MedLine is the authoritative database for biomedical and health literature used by researchers, clinicians, health care professionals and nurses. The library provides access to MedLine on two different platforms, EBSCOHost and Ovid. Both covers the same content, but the search interface and some features will differ.
Provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from over 4,800 current biomedical journals.
Access via OVID here to use their specific filters and options. OVID is the recommended search engine for MEDLINE - OVID Tools & Resources Portal
Provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from over 4,800 current biomedical journals.
Access via EBSCOhost here to use their specific research filters and options.
is the free public interface to the MedLine database. It also links to the full text archive PubMed Central. Also produced by the National Library of Medicine in the US, Pubmed is freely available and comprises Medline. It is often searched in addition to Medline (via EBSCOhost or Ovid) because it contains other items for example ‘in process citations’ (new research articles etc) that haven’t made it fully into Medline yet and may not have been assigned MESH headings (medical subject headings).
EMBASE (Excerpta Medica), is the most comprehensive database in biomedicine and pharmacology and gives you access to the most up-to-date information about medical and drug-related subjects with over 11 million records. The EMBASE journal collection is international with over 4,500 biomedical journals from 70 countries. Allows simultaneous searching of the Medline database.
Coverage: 1974 - present
Video Tutorials 
PsycINFO contains nearly two million citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, all in the field of psychology. It also includes information about the psychological aspects of related disciplines such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business and law. This database also allows seamless linking to the fulltext of articles contained in PsycArticles database.
E-tutorials (EBSCOhost) : Basic Searching | Advanced Searching | Creating Journal Alerts | Creating Search Alerts |
Note: The Library provides access to two other databases from the APA, PsycArticles and PsycBooks. When you search PsycInfo, it covers all the content in both of these databases so you don’t have to search them too. If the full text of an article or book chapter is not in PsycInfo, it links you directly to PsycArticles or PsycBooks.
Part of the Cochrane Collaboration. The Cochrane Library is considered to be the prime source of evidence-based healthcare. Contains Systematic Reviews, Controlled Trials Register and more. This database is freely available to anyone on the island of Ireland.
Help/Tutorials
The Cochrane Library contains high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making and comprises three databases:
Searching the Cochrane Library - Short Video 2.51 mins.
DynaMed is a clinical reference tool created by physicians for physicians and other health care professionals for use at the point-of-care. With clinically -organized summaries for more than 3,200 topics, DynaMed provides the latest content and resources.
DynaMed short tutorial - 3.42 mins
BMJ Best Practice is a clinical decision support tool offering a step-by-step approach to help manage patient diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and prevention.
It is freely available to residents in the Republic of Ireland via a national licence funded by the HSE National Health Library and Knowledge Service. Register to set up a free personal account and customise your experience of the platform. A BMJ Best Practice app is also available to download.
BMJ Best Practice - Video Introduction - 3.53 minutes
Evidence-Based Care Sheets - CINAHL Ultimate
Browse the list of Evidence-Based Care Sheets from the menu bar at the top of database. Summaries on specific key topics, which are focused on nursing practice incorporate the latest evidence, statistics, research and references. Access via CINAHL Ultimate below, and choose Evidence-Based Care Sheets link.
Indexing for approximately 3,000 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health. In addition, this database offers access to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, educational software, audiovisuals and book chapters. Full text of approx 750 journals, plus legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, drug records, research instruments and clinical trials.
E-tutorials: CINAHL Headings Tutorial | CINAHL Basic Searching | CINAHL Advanced Features | EBSCO Library Guide
See also our guide for Psychology.
The databases listed in this guide are relevant to psychotherapy students too. PsyInfo is a key database given its coverage of the broad psychology literature including applied and clinical psychology. Scopus and Web of Science will be useful given their broad multidisciplinary coverage of the scholarly literature.
From a broader health and medical viewpoint, Cinahl Ultimate will be relevant given its coverage of allied health areas and also Medline.
Scopus is one of the largest multi-disciplinary abstracting and indexing databases of research literature and quality web sources. It offers access to over 16,000 titles from more than 4000 international publishers, with abstracts available back to 1966. Citation data is available from 1996. Coverage includes scientific, technical, medical and social sciences literature, including arts and humanities. There are also 23 million patent records from 5 patent offices as well as links to 'Articles in Press' from over 3,000 journals.
Scopus Library Guide | E-tutorials and demos
Scopus is a citation index so you can track research via citations. You can see the references cited by each paper and view the papers that have subsequently cited a particular paper. It’s like looking back in time (the references cited by a paper) but also forward in time (the papers that cite a particular paper).
Web of Science is a citation index so you can track research via citations. You can see the references cited by each paper and view the papers that have subsequently cited a particular paper. It’s like looking back in time (the references cited by a paper) but also forward in time (the papers that cite a particular paper).
WoS is a multidisciplinary citation database covering over 10,000 of the world's highest impact research journals. It also offers the unique "citation searching" feature, allowing users to see how many times a paper/author has been cited and by whom. It consists of the three databases: the Science Citation Index Expanded (1945-present), the Social Sciences Citation Index (1956-present) and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present).
Help & E-tutorials: Web of Science - Search Tips (05:37 minutes) | Web Of Science Library Guide
Web of Knowledge is a web-based platform which provides access to high-quality research information. Several products are available to search within the Web of Knowledge platform
Full-text access to more than 8,000 journals (over 7,000 peer-reviewed) and indexing for almost 12,000 covering the following disciplines: business, communications, computer science, biology, chemistry, engineering, physics, psychology, education and nursing.
Coverage: Varies according to title.