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Environmental Health Sciences

Provides resources, strategies, and information on conducting research in Environmental Health Sciences.

Why Search Embase?

Embse is a database that includes the MEDLINE database, which is the core of PubMed, but it also contains more international journals & indexes pharmaceuticals more precisely.  It's a good database to use in conjunction with PubMed, especially in projects where you need to search more comprehensively.  If you search only one database, you'll miss at least 40% of the available literature.

Remember that when you use a different database, you may need to use other search terms.  Articles in Embase are indexed by Emtree terms that can differ from MeSH terms.

Running a Search

You can enter the same search in Embase as in PubMed, right on the main, or Quick Search, page.

Search Results

The set of results is rather large & not as focused on the topic as you would want.

You can see how Embase "translated" your search in the box above the Search button at the top of the page.  Only a keyword search was done.  How do you create a search in Embase that will give you access to Emtree (indexing) terms?

Revising Your Search

When each term is entered separately, you still get a lot of results, but they are beginning to be a bit more focused.

Adding United States to the search brings the total down to just over 9,000.

Search Tip - Finding Emtree Terms Easily

If you enter one search term at a time into the search box, you will see that Emtree terms appear below the box.  You can accept (by clicking them) or not.  When you do accept the Emtree term, the word(s) will appear in the search box within single quote marks.

Note also that there are some default settings underneath the search box.  "Search as broadly as possible" is checked; this means that Embase will search for results through both keywords & Emtree terms.  Uncheck this box if you need to narrow your search to citations that are indexed only.

Below that is one of the places where you can set a publication date limit.  Either accept "all years" by doing nothing or uncheck that box & add the years of your choice from the dropdown lists.

Focusing Your Search with Filters

Filters will help focus the search further.  In Embase, there are some filters at the top of the page & another set (some of which are the same) on the left. At the top, I'll use the Quick Limits tab to add Humans and English language.  Apply the filters by clicking the Search button above.

From the left, I'll select Adolescents from the Age category & choose the years 2014, 2013, & 2012 from Publication Date.  Click the Apply button at the top or bottom of the filter list to apply these filters.

Search Tip - Cited Reference Searching

A useful tool, cited reference searching, lets you look into the future, at articles that have referenced an article in your list of results.  In Embase, you'll see a Cited by:[#] notation after many articles, which tells you that this article has been cited by that number of articles in a particular database.

Detail of article record in Embase, showing the link for articles that have cited this record.

Click the link to be taken to the list, provided by the Scopus database.