Embase
Contents
Embase® is the biomedical database of Elsevier and contains millions of records from over
7,000 journal titles. Although about 60% of those journals are also covered by MEDLINE, 40%
are unique for Embase, especially the European literature and titles in the area of drugs/
pharmacology. The indexing of Embase is based on the Emtree thesaurus, which contains over
56,000 terms.
Start
- Go to the VU homepage: www.ub.vu.nl. Logging on through the Vrije Universiteit will provide
you with the VU-link which will give you information about the (digital) availability of the full
text.
- Type embase in the seach menu, choose e-Resources
and click Go!
Search
You can search immediately with Quick Search or click on
one of the other search methods (Search Forms). We advise you to use Advanced Search, Drug Search or Disease Search. Under the tab Emtree you’ll find the thesaurus- or indexterms of Embase.
 Quick Search:
Simple search screen for quick reference. The option Extensive search is ticked by default
and the search term will be matched with the Emtree thesaurus term (mapping) including the
underlying terms (explosion) and all fields will be
searched (as keyword). You can also limit on publication year.
 Advanced Search:
Very flexible search screen for extended
searches. The features mapping, explosion of
keyword/free text-searching can be used separately by ticking the appropriate boxes or unselecting them. You can limit a search result to
articles of which the search term is “of major focus”. The fifth option can be used to search very
extensively. Advanced Search enables you to search in specific fields, such as title, abstract.
The spelling will be e.g. retinoblastoma:ti,ab. You can find a list of field names descriptions
under ’field limits’. At the bottom of the screen there are options to (quickly) limit on e.g. year
of publication, publication type, language or subject.
 Drug Search:
This is the best search screen to search for drugs. Embase matches automatically to the Emtree thesaurus term and will find all synonyms of the substance. The options Drug Subheadings and Routes of Drug Administration enable you to limit your search to certain aspects.
On the page there are also other options to (quickly) limit your search.
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 Disease Search:
Search screen to search extensively on diseases, syndromes etc. Embase matches automatically to the matching Emtree thesaurus term. With the option Disease Subheadings you can
limit your search to certain aspects. On the page there are also other options to (quickly) limit
your search.
General search tips
- Use the asterisk when searching for alternatives: diabet* will find diabetes and diabetical.
- Quotation marks ‘ ’ of “ ” will maintain a specific word sequence: ‘molecular weight’ will
search only for this combination of words instead of two separate words.
- Search with free text words in title or abstract with: ti,ab, e.g. diabet*:ti,ab.
Searches
You can find your search history in the box Session Results. When using Combine your
marked searches will be combined
(AND/OR). With Advanced free combinations of searches can be made. Use
Delete if you want to delete your
marked searches. You can select all
searches simultaneously by
marking the box in front of Search Query. You need to register before you’re allowed to use
Save and Email Alert (top right of the homepage).
Search results
- The titles can be shown in sequence of relevance, publication year, or entry date.
- Abstract and Index terms will show abstract or index terms.
- Click on the title or mark mulptiple titles and click on View in order to look at the full record.
- Use the VU-Link for information about the full text.
- Filters enables you to limit on drug, disease, study type, journal, publication type or –year.
Click on the filters (which will turn green) en then on ‘Filters’.
- Open Search Details to check the ‘translation’ of the search query.
Saving your search results
Make a selection of the search results by marking the references through Selected. References
can be saved the following ways:
- Print: the results list will be printed as full record by default. Other options are Citations
only, Citations and Abstracts or Short record.
- Export: to Reference Manager, EndNote or ProCite you can export directy by RISformat. Use Plain Text and subsequently choose a display format (e.g. Citation only) so that the
text can be read by every word processor.
- E-Mail: choose from the HTML presentation (like the Internet browser) or Text and select a
display format. (Content selection)
Help
Embase.com provides a very good manual which you can consult on every page by clicking on
the Help button top right of the blue bar.
HK, June 2013