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Brighton & Sussex Medical School

Online resources

BSMS > About BSMS > Library > Online resources

Online resources

Online resources A–Z

A B C E G H J M N O P S T U V W

A

Anatomy.tv from Primal Pictures >

Contains 19 anatomical modules with 3D images and interactive models, narrated animations and illustrations, dissection slides, clinical case studies, the impact of aging on each body systems, a pronunciation guide and quizzes. User guide to using the resource available on the site.

*NHS OpenAthens password required

ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts >

Subject coverage includes health, social services, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, race relations, education, human resource management, sport and leisure management, sociology of travel and tourism. Coverage from 1987 onwards.

AMED: Allied and complementary medicine database >

Allied and complementary medicine database. Covers a selection of journals in complementary medicine, palliative care, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, rehabilitation, palliative care, podiatry, and speech and language therapy. Coverage from 1981 onwards. The database can however be accessed via UHSussex NHS requiring Open Athens credentials. 

B

BEI: British Education Index >

Subject coverage: curriculum; educational policy, planning and administration; special educational needs; adult and continuing education; educational psychology; higher education; teaching and teacher education; educational sociology; educational systems, levels and institutions; research and measurement techniques; vocational education and training; educational history. Particular strengths include educational policy and administration.

Best Practice from BMJ >

Gold-standard evidence from BMJ's Clinical Evidence. Peer-reviewed expert opinion. International guidelines. Information relating to over 10,000 diagnoses. Handouts for patients. All presented in a step-by-step approach, covering prevention, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. Now includes Cochrane Clinical Answers which contains clinical questions with short answers, and the opportunity to ‘drill down’ to the evidence from relevant Cochrane reviews.

Access from the NHS network or, if offsite, choose ‘Access through your institution’ > Search for the Trust > Login with UHSussex. OpenAthens. An app is also available here >

BMJ Case Reports >

BMJ Case Reports delivers a focused, peer-reviewed, collection of cases in all disciplines so that healthcare professionals, researchers and others can easily find clinically important information on common and rare conditions. This collection of case reports has more than 2800 articles from over 70 countries.

*NHS OpenAthens password required

BNF: British National Formulary >

The BNF provides UK healthcare professionals with authoritative and practical information on the selection and clinical use of medicines in a clear, concise and accessible manner.

*NHS OpenAthens password required

BNF for Children >

The British National Formulary for Children.

*NHS OpenAthens password required

BOB (Box of Broadcasts) >

BOB is an interactive media streaming service which allows the user to view or listen to over 1 million TV and radio programmes, record from 60+ channels, create clips, search transcripts, compile playlists and more. Click the blue Sign In box saying you are from University of Brighton or University of Sussex. Login with your regular bsmsxxxx username and password when prompted.

BP: British Pharmacopoeia >

Updated annually, the BP is the official, authoritative collection of standards for UK medicinal substances for human and veterinary use. All monographs and requirements of the European Pharmacopoeia are also included.

C

CINAHL: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature >

Subject coverage: nursing and allied health including health education, physiotherapy and social services in health care. Indexes books, journals, research reports and dissertations. Coverage from 1982.

ClinicalKey >

ClinicalKey provides all of Elsevier's medical and surgical content in one online resource, which includes over 900 key books (many of which are on reading lists), over 500 journals and thousands of videos and images.

*NHS OpenAthens password required

Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS) NICE >

NICE CKS provides primary care practitioners with a readily accessible summary of the current evidence base and practical guidance on best practice in respect of over 350 common and/or significant primary care presentations.

Cochrane Library >

A collection of databases containing high-quality evidence to inform people providing and receiving care, and those responsible for research, teaching, funding and administration at all levels. Includes full-text systematic reviews and a register of controlled trials.

E

Embase

Embase is a biomedical and pharmacological database that indexes 4,600 journals from 70 countries. 1947–current.

Access via University Hospitals Sussex >

ERIC: Educational Resources Information Center >

Subject coverage: education in the USA, with some international references: curriculum; educational policy, planning and administration; special educational needs; adult and continuing education; educational psychology; higher education; teaching and teacher education; educational sociology; educational systems, levels and institutions; research and measurement techniques; vocational education and training; educational history. Coverage from 1966.

G

Global Health >

Global Health is a specialist bibliographic database dedicated to public health research and practice. It contains coverage of core public health literature, including the areas of tropical medicine, infectious diseases and epidemiology. From 1973 to present.

Guidelines: International >

This collection of guidelines is based in the US but includes English-language guidelines from around the world.

J

Journal Citation Reports (from Web of Knowledge)

A comprehensive resource for journal evaluation, using citation data drawn from scholarly and technical journals worldwide. Coverage is multidisciplinary and international. Provides journal impact factors. Log in to Web of Knowledge and choose Journal Citation Reports.

Access via University of Brighton >

Access via University of Sussex >

M

MEDLINE

MEDLINE contains over four million citations and abstracts, The database contains a broad range of medical topics relating to research, clinical practice, administration, policy issues, and health care services. Produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Subject content includes anatomy, communication disorders, microbiology, pathology, physiology, psychiatry, toxicology, parasitology, reproductive biology, epidemiology, gene therapy, surgical and pharmaceutical intervention, ethical and legal issues, laboratory techniques and procedures, diagnosis and management, clinical research trials and experimental treatment protocols, legislation and regulation, allied health specialties, investigational drugs, and new drug uses.

*MEDLINE is available from a variety of sources. Choose from the following:

MedicinesComplete >

Provides access to a number of resources, including Kucer's The Use of Antibiotics, Martindale: the Complete Drug Reference, Pharmaceutical Excipients, Stedman's Medical Dictionary, Stockley's Drug Interactions and Stockley's Herbal Medicines Interactions, British National Formulary and British National Formulary for Children.

MIDIRS (Midwife and Infant Care) >

Abstracting and indexing database produced by The MIDIRS (Midwives Information and Resource Service), coverage from 1971. [2 user licence available via University of Brighton]

MITCognet >

Contains a searchable library of resources in the field of cognitive and brain sciences, including journals, books, reference works, online courses, and conference materials.

N

Newspapers >

Searchable collection of articles from the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the Independent on Sunday, the Observer, the Sunday Telegraph, the Sunday Times and the Times. Coverage from 1996.

NHS apps >

Downloading NHS Apps to personal devices have recently changed and instructions to do so need new links. 

NIHR evidence search >

Plain language summaries of health and care research that is funded by the NIHR, with links to full text of original research.

O

Office for National Statistics - Health and social care >

UK government statistics on life expectancy and the impact of occupation, illness and drug misuse.

OMIM: Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man >

A catalogue of human genes and genetic disorders authored and edited by Dr Victor A McKusick and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere, and developed for the World Wide Web by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). The database contains textual information and references.

Oxford English Dictionary >

The accepted authority on the English language, with over 600,000 words— past and present—from the English-speaking world.

P

PsycArticles >

Provides full-text access to over 60 journals, covering 1894 to the present. The database is provided by the American Psychological Association (APA).

*Access via the University of Sussex

PsycInfo >

Subject coverage: psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business and law. Contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books and dissertations. Journal coverage goes back to the 1800s and covers more than 1,900 journals. Chapter and book coverage includes English-language material published from 1987.

PubMed >

PubMed is a service of the US National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to the 1950s. PubMed includes links to full-text articles and other related resources.

S

ScienceDirect >

ScienceDirect provides access to over 1,800 journals covering mainly science, technology and medicine. Full-text access to subscribed titles from 1993 or later.

Scitable: A free online science education resource >

Free resource for undergraduate educators and students from Nature Publishing Group. Scitable currently concentrates on genetics and cell biology, which include the topics of evolution, gene expression and the rich complexity of cellular processes shared by living organisms. You can browse the library or search at www.nature.com/scitable/topics.

Scopus >

Covers scientific, technical, medical and social science literature (16,000 peer reviewed titles). Full-text links and abstracts back to 1966, a full 10-year reference backfile by 2005, and daily updates.

Access via University of Sussex >

Access via University of Brighton >

Social Care Online >

Subject coverage includes health care, housing, mental health, social care services, social policy and social work. Produced by the Social Care Institute for Excellence, it covers journal articles, websites, research reviews, legislation and government documents.

SpringerProtocols Archive >

SpringerProtocols is a database of more than 28,000 life sciences protocols published between 1981 abd 2012. These documents provide individual sets of instructions to allow scientists to recreate experiments in their own laboratories.

T

The James Lind Library >

The James Lind Library has been created to help people understand fair tests of treatments in health care. The principles of fair tests are explained in essays with many examples.

TRIP Database >

TRIP (formerly Turning Research Into Practice) is a clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care. It also allows users to search across other content types including images, videos, patient information leaflets, educational courses and news.

U

UK Clinical Trials Gateway >

The UK Clinical Trials Gateway provides information on UK trials for participants and researchers. UK Clinical Gateway is now Be Part of Research.

UpToDate >

Evidence-based summaries that cover every aspect of most medical conditions. Includes aetiology, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. Covers primary and secondary care.

*NHS OpenAthens password required

V

Visible Body Human Anatomy Atlas >

A 3D interactive anatomy visualisation and education tool to explore the human body from head to toe via thousands of interactive anatomical structures.

Also available as an app to BSMS students and staff – contact the BSMS Library team for access to the app.

W

Web of Science >

Provides access to the following:

  • Science Citation Index Expanded (1970–present)
  • Social Sciences Citation Index (1970–present)
  • Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975–present)
  • Conference Proceedings Citation Index: Science (1990–present)
  • Conference Proceedings Citation Index: Social Science & Humanities (1990–present)

Access via University of Brighton >

Access via University of Sussex >

Covers a broad range of sources and is particularly good for interdisciplinary searches. Offers citation searching.

Find research information

BSMS Research >

Sussex and Brighton University Institutional repositories

  • Sussex Research Online (SRO) is a digital repository containing research output from the University of Sussex, including BSMS research.
  • The University of Brighton Repository (UBR) is a central institutional repository that records the work of the university's researchers. It is an open access resource and is freely available via the web to researchers worldwide.

Print theses holdings in Sussex and Brighton University libraries

  • The University of Sussex Library holds in print all doctoral theses written by Sussex research students submitted before October 2009, and also keeps a small selection of nasters dissertations. You can use Library Search to search for these items. All theses are reference only and can only be read in the library.
  • You can search for dissertations and theses held in the University of Brighton libraries by using the Library Catalogue. Type 'class:(DISS*)' into the search box to get a list of all the dissertations held in the libraries.

UK theses

  • The Electronic Theses Online System (EThOS) is a service from the British Library that provides online access to the full text of UK doctoral theses. It replaces the British Library Thesis Service. The EThOS database contains over 380,000 records of doctoral theses from UK higher education institutions. Many of these have already been digitised and are available for immediate download.

International theses

It is sometimes more difficult to obtain the full text of non-UK theses as they are not always available through the British Library.

  • Proquest Dissertations and Theses: Global is the world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1861 to the present day and offering full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997. Unlike many of our other resources, it also contains some masters theses.
  • Dissertation Express allows you to buy copies of theses from the US and Canada.
  • Google Scholar can be a useful tool to identify potential resources.
  • The DART-Europe E-Theses portal contains full text e-theses from 28 European countries.
  • Proquest Dissertations and Theses: Open provides the full text of open-access dissertations and theses free of charge. This is where the (mainly American) authors have opted to publish as open access and make their research available for free on the open web. It is a fairly new service and should not be used for an exhaustive search.
  • Open Access Thesis and Dissertations (OATD) is an index of over 2.7 million records of postgraduate theses and dissertations from 43 countries.  It only searches theses that are available via Open Access.

Grey Literature >

There is debate about the place of internet search engines in literature searching, and some scientists argue strongly that it is not a valid source of information. However, in reality, the internet provides increasing opportunities to access grey literature. Search engines such as Google have become a major route by which grey literature can be made accessible to a wide international audience. This page contains links to the major Grey Literature sites.

Sussex Research Hive

The Sussex Research Hive is the library's designated area for researchers, open to all doctoral researchers and research staff. For further information, go to www.sussex.ac.uk/library/research/hive.

Copyright issues in your doctoral thesis

See the guide to copyright from the University of Sussex, which includes copyright issues within doctoral theses.

Library catalogues

  • COPAC searches around 90 British and Irish academic, national and specialist library catalogues in one search
  • British Library – this is a link to the main catalogue

Using other University libraries

SCONUL Access allows most university library users to borrow or use books and journals at other libraries that belong to the scheme. You can apply to be part of the scheme online.

Getting help

  • BSMS Library: We can help you with health- and medicine-related information and searching. We also provide small group and one-to-one sessions on literature searching.
  • University of Sussex Library Research support: Library service specialising in supporting doctoral researchers. Offers bespoke one-to-one resource awareness sessions, runs various group training workshops and organises seminars and events to engage with the research community on campus.
  • University of Brighton Library Research support: Information Services provides support for researchers throughout the research process, whatever their level of experience. This support can be accessed via online and print resources and through face-to-face guidance and training.

Find images

Anatomy.tv from Primal Pictures >

Contains 19 anatomical modules with 3D images and interactive models, narrated animations and illustrations, dissection slides, clinical case studies, a pronunciation guide and quizzes. User guide to using the resource available on the site. Requires NHS OpenAthens password to access

Creative Commons Search >

Please note that this is not a search engine; instead, it offers convenient access to search services provided by other independent organisations. CC has no control over the results that are returned – it is a nonprofit organisation that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.

HEAL: Health Education Assets Library >

The Health Education Assets Library (HEAL) is a collection of over 22,000 freely available digital materials for health sciences education. The collection is housed at the University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Digital Library. Browse or search the collection.

HEE Copyright Free Images >

Images are the type of copyright material most used to illustrate presentations and training. It is possible to find images published in the public domain, under Creative Commons licences or the Open Government Licence. This page explores these in detail.

PHIL: Public Health Image Library >

Searchable collection of public health photos, illustrations and videos. Most are freely downloadable and have no copyright restrictions. Please check the FAQs area for advice on searching, downloading and use of images.

Visible Body Human Anatomy Atlas >

A 3D interactive anatomy visualisation and education tool to explore the human body from head to toe via thousands of interactive anatomical structures.

Also available as an app to BSMS students and staff – contact the BSMS Library team for access to the app.

Wellcome Images >

Images from the Wellcome Trust collection – historical and contemporary.

Further resources

For further resources, including reference guides, videos, E-tutorials, patient experience resources, visit studentcentral (login required).