Explore Databases on our new A-Z Resources page
Academic and clinical articles are published in thousands of journals worldwide. They are the main resource for healthcare research and can be easily searched using the databases on the A-Z page.
All databases marked with a blue lock icon are available on or off campus with your RCSI network password.
We recommend you use Chrome or Firefox browsers with Web of Science and ClinicalKey
*The EBM Reviews - Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (COCH) database is being reloaded to implement the new full set of data and to enable Auto Alerts. We expect the reload to be live on 9 September 2025. Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews includes over 5,000 full-text reviews on the effectiveness of healthcare interventions.
Biomedical and pharmacological database, providing the most up-to-date information about medical and drug-related subjects. (IReL Resource)
EMBASE is a medical and pharmaceutical resource. It is an essential resource to search when writing a systematic review, scoping review, thesis, or journal article for publication. The Advanced Search function allows you to search by keywords and subject headings (called Emtree). EMBASE contains Medline content within it, so if you have already searched Medline, you can exclude that content from your results list by adding this code to the end of your search string: NOT [medline]/lim. Alternatively, you can click on the Sources filter on the results page, and click on the EMBASE portion of the venn diagram and click Apply.
The library provides 1:1 tutorials on searching EMBASE, which can be booked on our Clinical Query Service Online Form.
More information on using EMBASE is provided in the Library Bitesize instruction video on the Library Moodle page.
ERIC indexes hundreds of journals in education and the social sciences and also cover education-related materials from scholarly organizations, professional associations, research centers and policy organizations.
Global Health is a specialist bibliographic, abstracting and indexing database dedicated to public health research and practice.
Health Business Elite provides comprehensive journal content detailing all aspects of health care administration and other non-clinical aspects of health care institution management.
Impact factors for 5,900 + biomedical and science journals, measuring the frequency with which an average article from a journal is cited in a particular year. (IReL Resource)
LISTA indexes more than 560 core journals, plus books, research reports and proceedings. Subject coverage includes librarianship, classification, cataloging, bibliometrics, online information retrieval, information management and more.
Medline: A comprehensive source for medical and biomedical sciences.
The Medline database is generally recognized as the premier source for bibliographic and abstract coverage of biomedical literature. Widely used by students, researchers, and clinicians, the data from the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) is available in various versions. Medline records appear in many databases but RCSI Library offers three versions: via PubMed, Ovid, and Ebsco. PubMed is the NLM version and it is globally available and free to all. Each version enables optimum searching and results but access, features and interfaces differ.
A comprehensive source for medical and biomedical sciences.
MEDLINE (PubMed) is a comprehensive source for medical and biomedical sciences.
The Medline database is generally recognized as the premier source for bibliographic and abstract coverage of biomedical literature. Medline is the largest subset of PubMed. Widely used by students, researchers and clinicians, the data from the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) is available in various versions. Medline records appear in many databases but RCSI Library offers three versions: via PubMed, Ovid and Ebsco. PubMed is the NLM version and it is globally available and free to all. Each version enables optimum searching and results but access, features and interfaces differ. PubMed is the US National Library of Medicine research level version of MEDLINE indexing over 20 million medical and healthcare articles.
For more information, please access our library guide: Finding Information
PubMed features:
References to 2.5 million + articles from over 2,000 journals in behavioural and social sciences.
PubMed – Medicine; includes Nursing, Pharmacy, Psychology and other related topics.
PubMed is a large medical database produced by the National Library of Medicine in the US. It contains over 37 million records and abstracts, including all those from Medline and PubMed Central (PMC). Links to full text are shown, some will be open to all and some are dependent on publisher access. You can use your own keywords, as well as the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) thesaurus to search for your topic. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher websites.
For more information on how to search PubMed, save and export material from your searches, please view the Library Bitesize instruction video through the Library Moodle page.
Reaxys Academic is a web-based search and retrieval system for chemical compounds, bibliographic data and chemical reactions. It is the largest chemical database, combining over a billion chemistry data points with AI to support innovation in drug discovery, chemical R&D and academia. (IReL Resource)
Scopus is a large abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Across all research fields - science, mathematics, engineering, technology, health and medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities.
Web of Science Research Assistant is now on trial until December 12 2025. Web of Science is a large suite of over 12 databases and citation indexes in the sciences and the social sciences. Included in this is ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Citation Index.
RCSI Library has access to Web of Science, Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and Essential Science Indicators (ESI), ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Citation Index and Conference Proceedings Citation Index. (IReL Resource). Training
Training videos, courses, and guides can be found at the training portal: Training – InCites Benchmarking & Analytics
LibGuides that contain additional information: Training resources - Web of Science - LibGuides at Clarivate Analytics
To register for a live training webinar, go here: https://clarivate.com/academia-government/training-support/training-calendar-live/
Westlaw IE provides online access to Irish legal materials such as case reports, case digests, legal journals and unreported judgements. (IReL Resource). Please sign in with your rcsi email and start a ‘new session’.
Browse, discover, and keep up-to-date with e-journals via the Library's new platform BrowZine. Find out more about BrowZine, its features, and how to download the app onto your phone on the Library Blog.
On or Off-campus
The portal connection tells the journal site that you are an authorized user, whether on or off campus. You may be asked for your RCSI Network username and password before connection. For any issues with your RCSI Network username or password see Printing and IT.
Collections of full-text e-journals
These packages are useful for quick searching and browsing but are limited to specific selections of journals only - for comprehensive searches, use databases like MEDLINE and CINAHL first.
To search all journal collections RCSI Library subscribes to, please search Journal Collections at A-Z Resources.
Over 390 journals across the sciences, social sciences and humanities. Cambridge Core is the online content delivery service for Cambridge University Press’s collection of journals and books across the sciences, social sciences and humanities. (IReL Resource)
ClinicalKey Physican is a dynamic clinical resource designed to provide physicians with fast, clinically-relevant answers from Elsevier’s library of medical and surgical content. Includes over 1,000 e-books, 500 e-journals, thousands of videos, and millions of images.
Large comprehensive collection of over 200 peer-reviewed journals including healthcare management.
Areas covered include finance, economics, education, social sciences, management, marketing, information science and more. (IReL Resource).
LWW provides essential information for healthcare students and professionals, in their particular fields of research, be it oncology, internal medicine, radiology or nursing research. (partially IReL & RCSI Resource)
Consists of over 250 online journals from arts, social science, scientific, technical, medical, professional and humanities disciplines. (IReL Resource)
The resource provides full text access to over 2,500 journals and 145 books in all disciplines published by Elsevier Science. ScienceDirect also includes a significant number of Open Access content.
Multidisciplinary resource. Access to the full text of over 1,300 journals published by Taylor and Francis. Includes acces to 159 titles within the T&F Healtcare Collection (formally Informa Healthcare). (IReL Resource)
This resource provides full text access to over 1,600 journals in business, chemistry, computer science, engineering, law, life sciences, mathematic, physics, psychology and social sciences published by John Wiley & Sons. (IReL Resource)
Document Supply
We are happy to obtain articles or books which we don't stock in our collections from elsewhere. For more information, see our Document Supply page or email docsupply@rcsi.ie
There are also many electronic books in all subjects at all levels: clinical textbooks, atlases, pharmacopeia, study guides.
Search or browse our e-book collections by going to Primo VE.
All e-books are available 24/7 on or off campus with your RCSI network username and password. To view some of our eBook Collections please see below of search eBook Collections in the A-Z Resources.
At present use Chrome or Firefox browsers with ClinicalKey.
ClinicalKey Physican is a dynamic clinical resource designed to provide physicians with fast, clinically-relevant answers from Elsevier’s library of medical and surgical content. Includes over 1,000 e-books, 500 e-journals, thousands of videos, and millions of images.
AccessMedicine is a search platform for internal medicine resources from McGraw Hill containing 90+ e-textbooks, a diagnostic tool, drug information, cases, images and videos.
Provides online access to some of the world's leading drug and healthcare references including BNF, BNF for Children, Clinical Calculators, Psychotropic Drug Directory, Palliative Care Formulary, Martindale and more.
Almost 300 eBooks covering a diverse range of subjects including Behavioural Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Heath Professions, Nursing, Pharmacology & Public Health. Includes the LWW Nursing Bridge Collection of over 70 nursing eBooks.
Ebook Central provides full text access to eBooks in a variety of subject areas.
DynaMed is a clinical reference tool created by physicians for physicians and other health care professionals for use primarily at the 'point-of-care'. With clinically-organized summaries for more than 3,000 topics.
UpToDate is an evidence-based clinical decision support resource at the point of care.
RCSI Library has a small collection of visual resources.
Visible Body includes 3D models of anatomical structures and systems, physiology animations, pathology visualizations, illustrations, cadaver images paired with CT or MRI scans, definitions, pronunciations, learning presentations that use this visual content and more. For more information see: Library Blog