Online searching of the pharmaceutical literature

Online databases that cover pharmaceutical topics are described and then illustrated with four sample searches. The online databases useful for searching pharmaceutical topics can be grouped into three categories: (1) databases devoted exclusively to drugs and the pharmacy profession, such as International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, Pharmaceutical News Index, and Ringdoc; (2) databases covering the clinical medicine literature, such as MEDLINE and its related files and Excerpta Medica; and (3) other scientific databases that include coverage of the pharmaceutical literature, such as BIOSIS Previews, Chem, Scisearch, and NTIS. Databases from each of these groups are discussed. The fields, which are categories of information contained in each record (e.g., author, article title, journal reference, abstract, and assigned indexing terms), are delineated, along with descriptions of how these fields function during the searching operation. The implications of the indexing policies of the various databases on search strategy are also explained. Sample search strategies are illustrated to compare file retrievals on specific subjects.