A comprehensive literature search is an essential first step in the research process. Effectively identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing existing evidence helps researchers understand what is already known, identify gaps in the literature, refine research questions, and build a strong foundation for scholarly work.

This page provides resources to help WCUCOM students and faculty navigate the literature search process, including guidance for developing effective search strategies, evaluating the quality and relevance of sources, and accessing biomedical and health sciences databases available through William Carey University. These tools can support researchers as they move from an initial research question to a focused, evidence-informed project.

Scholarly Snippets - YouTube

• The Scholarly Snippets workshop series is the culmination of a multi-institutional collaborative effort between osteopathic medical libraries, aimed at providing informative and quality presentations relating to research, scholarship, and resources.

AccessMedicine

• Includes a complete full-text library of clinical and basic science textbooks, study tools, and test prep.

• Creating Your Access Profile | Access App | Video Tutorial

MEDLINE Complete

• A robust database providing full text for hundreds of top biomedical and health journals indexed in MEDLINE.

PubMed

• A free resource supporting the search and retrieval of citations and abstracts from biomedical and life sciences literature from MEDLINE, PubMedCentral, and Bookshelf. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central, publisher web sites, or full text databases and journals licensed by William Carey University Libraries, such as MEDLINE Complete.

Academic Search Complete

• A multidisciplinary database that can be used to find articles on a variety of subjects.

ScienceDirect

• WCU subscribes to the Health & Life Sciences journal collection - including nursing, medicine, dentistry, biology, biochemistry, environmental sciences, toxicology, pharmacology, immunology, neuroscience, and more

JSTOR

• A digital library of academic content in many formats and disciplines. The collections include top peer-reviewed scholarly journals as well as respected literary journals, academic monographs, research reports from trusted institutes, and diverse primary sources.

AccessPharmacy

• This comprehensive, content-rich online pharmacy resource allows users to explore leading pharmacy references, search curriculum topics, and research drugs and supplements.

• Creating Your Access Profile | Access App

Lexidrug

• Provides clear, concise, point-of-care drug information, including dosing, administration, warnings and precautions, as well as clinical content, such as clinical practice guidelines, IV compatibility from Trissel's 2 Clinical Pharmaceutics Database, and other tools. GSA scheduled.

• Video Tutorials

• Request Lexidrug mobile app access (App access for currently enrolled WCU School of Pharmacy students and faculty ONLY)

Natural Medicines

• The most authoritative resource available on dietary supplements, natural medicines, and complementary alternative and integrative therapies.

Annual Reviews

• Provides researchers, professors, and scientific professionals with a definitive academic resource in more than 45 scientific disciplines; saves you time by synthesizing the vast amount of primary research literature and identifying the principal contributions in your field. William Carey University coverage includes 48 titles for the last four years.

Cochrane Clinical Answers

• Cochrane Clinical Answers (CCAs) provide a readable, digestible, clinically focused entry point to rigorous research from Cochrane systematic reviews. They are designed to be actionable and to inform decision making at the point of care. Each Cochrane Clinical Answer contains a clinical question, a short answer, and an opportunity to ‘drill down’ to the evidence from relevant Cochrane reviews. The evidence is displayed in a user friendly format, mixing narrative, numbers and graphics. The target audience for Cochrane Clinical Answers is healthcare practitioners and professionals, and other informed health care decision-makers. Cochrane Clinical Answers have been developed by Cochrane Innovations Ltd. and Wiley Online Library.

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

• Contains full text articles, as well as protocols focusing on the effects of healthcare. The reviews are highly structured and systematic, with evidence included or excluded on the basis of explicit quality criteria, to minimize bias. Data is evidence-based medicine and is often combined statistically (with meta-analysis) to increase the power of the findings of numerous studies, each too small to produce reliable results individually. 

Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials

• A bibliography of controlled trials identified by contribution to the Cochrane Collaboration and others, as part of an international effort to hand search the world's journals and create an unbiased source of data for systematic reviews; includes reports published in conference proceedings and in many other sources not currently listed in MEDLINE® or other bibliographic databases.

Cochrane Methodology Register

• A bibliography of publications which report on methods used in the conduct of controlled trials, includes journal articles, books, and conference proceedings; these articles are taken from the MEDLINE® database and from hand searches. The database contains studies of methods used in reviews and more general methodological studies which could be relevant to anyone preparing systematic reviews. CMR records contain the title of the article, information on where it was published (bibliographic details), and in some cases, a summary of the article.