EMBASE description

  • biomedical and pharmaceutical database
  • contains all of MEDLINE's citations and many more unique citations
  • use when searching for information on food/diet/nutrition, medical devices, or drugs

Access EMBASE

  1. Go to Ruth Lilly Medical Library Databases (link opens in new window).
  2. Scroll down to click on EMBASE (Elsevier), OR click "E" on the alphabet bar.
  3. NOTE: If you are off-campus, you will need to enter your university ID and passphrase before you can access this resource.

Basic search in EMBASE

an image of EMBASE quick search screen

  1. Type terms in the Quick Search Box
  2. Use a single or double quotes around a phrase
  3. Use subject heading from EMTREEĀ®
  4. Combine concepts using Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT

Boolean "AND"

Boolean (limited by AND)

Using AND will retrieve fewer results (ex. heart attacks AND aspirin)

Boolean "OR"

Boolean (expanded by OR)

OR will retrieve more results (ex. heart attack OR myocardial information)

Boolean "NOT"

Boolean (limited by NOT)

NOT will exclude unwanted terms (ex. substance abuse NOT cigarettes).

Table 1 (above): Boolean AND, OR, and NOT visualized.

Results page: Fine-tune your search

Filter Results:

Beneath the search box: If you click Quick limits, you will have the options to limit your search to Human subjects and English language.

an image of EMBASE quick limits search screen
DropDown Filters

Left-side bar: From most recent search, click each filter to see how many articles are in that subset: e.g. age, gender, drugs used, and other diseases.

Work with Search History

  • Combine searches using AND; OR
  • Select any search in History to recall the results
Search History

Find full text of an article

  1. To see if full text is available, use the Find It Button . This will take you to a page where you can link to the full-text.
  2. If no full text is available, scroll down and click on Ruth Lilly Medical Library Content Management & Delivery under "Additional options for finding full-text". Log in with your IU username and password to request the article.

Export, Print, and Save EMBASE references

  1. Check the boxes to the left of the desired articles.
  2. Click on the View, Export, or Email link (found at either the top or the bottom of the search results) and follow the prompts.
    • For EndNote Desktop, make sure the export format is RIS format (Reference Manager, ProCite, EndNote).
    • For EndNote Web (Basic), make sure:
      1. the export format is Plain Text and output is Full Record.
      2. the import option is EMBASE.com.

Assistance

Please feel free to email us (medlref@iupui.edu) or call (317) 274-7182

 


 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.