Directory of Databases
Please read the Rosenthal Center Disclaimer and Warning
The literature on clinical and scientific research into alternative medicine treatments is widely scattered, as is background information on alternative medicine systems and approaches. The following is a compilation of established sources in the USA, Eur ope and Asia, designed to facilitate research by both professionals and the public. This may be clinical, biomedical, review, meta-analytical or survey research. The listing is hyperlinked to existing Web sites where available, or to brief information on the resource, such as: how to obtain further details; type of literature covered; size of the holding; and mode of access.
The major bibliographic databases that offer comprehensive coverage of biomedical research literature also contain a significant number of citations on alternative and complementary medicine information. These databases index a relatively small number of alternative medicine journals but generally have a policy of indexing the entire contents of the predominantly peer-review journals they include. So, as increasing numbers of articles on alternative medicine are published in these journals, they are bei ng indexed.
Each of these databases contains in the region of 55,000 to 70,000 references to alternative medicine research which is less than 1% of the total contents in each case. There is partial overlap in the alternative medicine subsets of these databases.
MEDLINE/ PubMed
MEDLINE is the world's largest single biomedical database, produced by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), USA. Nearly
4,500 journals from over 70 countries are indexed and the 11,000,000 references go back to
1966. Indexing keywords are known as MeSH terms. PubMed is freely, publicly available on
the World Wide Web, has now become the predominant means of accessing MEDLINE. New PubMed
includes linked books and previews. The Old PubMed is still available - click on the
sidebar.
CAM on PubMed is a subset of the PubMed database that contains over 220,000 citations of journal articles related to CAM research. Go to PubMed and click on the "Limit" function. From the Subsets pull down menu, select "Complementary Medicine" and then search from within this subset. For more information go to the Q & A fact sheet.
PubMed offers free, open searches of the MEDLINE database in addition to other facilities such as citation matching. PubMed is produced by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, part of the National Library of Medicine, and has evolved from a fast track service for electronically published journals. Searches are made of the entire 8 million plus citations in MEDLINE, together with a growing number of pre-MEDLINE citations which do not yet have MeSH index terms, and also citations supplied electronically by publishers. PubMed uses a simple, single window for search terms, and is robust to use. Simple search terms may be one or more of author last names, text words, or other keywords, and advanced retrieval expressions may also be entered. When given, MeSH headings are simply incorporated as text terms. The MeSH term, alternative medicine, is linked to 26 main headings. Go to the MeSH Browser and enter the search term, alternative medicine.
MEDLINE continues to be available on-line through Grateful Med software, either through subscription or through a participating library or secondary distributors. Account holders can use Internet Grateful Med . Monthly updates are available in printed form as Index Medicus. Full text articles are available through Lonesome Doc, a document delivery service.
Through a recent arrangement with the Cochrane Collaboration an international Register of Controlled Clinical Trials (RCCTs) has been established so that in future, if a researcher wishes to obtain only Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) or Controlled Clinical Trials (CCTs) in alternative medicine research they will be clearly indexed as such in MEDLINE. An electronic publication of the Cochrane Library is available by subscription on the Internet or on CD-Rom and is updated quarterly.
EMBASE
Produced by Elsevier Science BV, The
Netherlands. Embase has extensive coverage of pharmacological as well as biomedical
research. More than 3,700 journals are indexed from 110 countries, using the EMTREE the
saurus of keyword terms. There are over 6.5 million references from 1974. This database is
available on-line through DataStar, DIALOG, DIMDI and other services. It is also available
on CD-ROM through Silver Platter and OVID and in printed form as Ex cerpta Medica
Abstract Journals. There is a document delivery service called EMDOCS.
SCIENCE CITATION INDEX and
SOCIAL SCIENCE CITATION INDEX
Produced by the ISI (Institute for Scientific
Information), these two databases cover 5,600 scientific and 1,700 social science journals
worldwide, together with selected coverage of related material. The multi-disciplinary set
of ISI databases, including the Arts and Humanities Index, totals over 300 million
references.
All cited references are included in the databases making the system user-friendly for those who are not trained librarians. After an initial keyword search, the search tools, Related Records and KeyWords Plus, enable you to locate additional, relevant information taken directly from the references in the results of the initial search. The Genuine Article provides direct access to the full text documents.
AMED (Allied and Complementary Medicine Database)
Produced by the British Library's Medical
Information Centre, Boston Spa, UK. This database contains 100,000 references from 400
journals on alternative and complementary medicine going back to 1985. The thesaurus
combines MeSH terms and additional AMED keywords. Few abstracts are available. Since March
1998 the database has been available on CD-ROM from SilverPlatter. On-line searching is
through Data Star, Dialogue, DIMDI, or MIC-KIBIC. The database is also available as a
floppy disk and in printed format as the Complementary Medicine Index. There is a
document delivery service for full text articles.
IBIS
(The Interactive BodyMind Information system)
This commercial electronic database of Natural Medicine is produced by the Integrative
Medical Arts Group, Inc. It is a most unusual resource providing comparative data on 282
common medical conditions, offering treatment information for each from over 12 systems of
natural medicine and alternative therapies. The program is currently available in CD-Rom
format for PC and Mac.
DATADIWAN
This project from Germany, Patienteninformation fur Naturheilkunde, (Patient information
for natural therapies) has a searchable database on line. Much of it is in English. The
database provides information on holistic medicine and a network linking research
institutions and organizations worldwide. There are over 5,000 bibliographic entries
and 900 addresses. Datadiwan incorporates the former International Network for
Research on Alternative Therapies (INRAT).
This research information service is run by the Research Council for Complementary Medicine (RCCM), London, UK. The CISCOM bibliographic database contains over 34,000 references, uses the AMED thesaurus and combines data from MEDLINE, AMED and other specialist European databases. There is no direct access to the database which has been developed in-house on Filemaker Pro software.
A special feature of the CISCOM database is a large collection of randomized clinical trials (RCTs), including the Cochrane Field in Complementary/Alternative Medicine collection of RCTs. Abstracts and information packs are available - contact for scale of fees.
This researchers' in-house computerized database from Germany holds references to controlled clinical trials in homeopathy, acupuncture and phytotherapy; methodology and meta-analyses. There are approximately 30,000 bibliographic references from a variety of sources dating back to 1950. The database is not available on-line but most of the articles cited are available as full text copies, usually in English.
Contact information is available for the following search services:
The following databases also contain a considerable number of references on alternative
and complementary medicine:
An alphabetical search list is available of all NLM databases.
See also the Botanical Medicine Information Resources for further information on herbal databases and collections
A searchable database of NIH funded research and intramural research projects. Mainly conventional biomedicine, but contains a growing proportion of alternative medicine research pro jects/ clinical trials.
Clinical Trials on the Web
These listings are of interest to researchers and researchers, professionals and patients,
providing active links to those trials which are currently recruiting. There are three
subsets:
There are several medical conference databases:
The information for this listing has been researched and compiled by Jackie Wootton, M.Ed, Informatics Project Director, in collaboration with a group who first met in Vienna, Austria in June 1994 at the Wiener Internationale Akademie fur Ganzheitsmedizin (The Vienna International Academy for Integrated Medicine).
Information last updated December, 2000
