Research Guides: Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences: Find Articles

Selecting a Database

The literature of Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences is primarily indexed in MEDLINE (via PubMed), and CINAHL, linked in the box below.

Sources of OT Literature

Biomedical and Health Sciences

Medline via PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed comprises over 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. PubMed citations and abstracts include the fields of biomedicine and health, covering portions of the life sciences, behavioral sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering. PubMed also provides access to additional relevant web sites and links to the other NCBI molecular biology resources.
EMBASE: Excerpta Medica 1974 – present (updated daily) This link opens in a new window
EMBASE is a biomedical and pharmaceutical database indexing over 3,500 international journals in the following fields: drug research, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, toxicology, clinical and experimental human medicine, health policy and management, public health, occupational health, environmental health, drug dependence and abuse, psychiatry, forensic medicine, and biomedical engineering/instrumentation. There is selective coverage for nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, psychology, and alternative medicine. Dates of coverage: 1974 to present (updated daily)

Allied Health and Nursing

CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new window
CINAHL indexes over 3,800 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health, with indexing for selected journals back to 1937. Topics covered are related to nursing, physical therapy, health education, social service/healthcare, occupational therapy, and related disciplines. CINAHL also provides access to healthcare books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of professional practice, educational software and audiovisual materials in nursing. Dates of coverage: 1937 to present.

Occupational Therapy

OTseeker (Occupational Therapy Systematic Evaluation of Evidence) This link opens in a new window
OTseeker is a database that contains abstracts of systematic reviews, randomised controlled trials and other resources relevant to occupational therapy interventions. Most trials have been critically appraised for their validity and interpretability.

Sports and Exercise

SPORTDiscus This link opens in a new window
SPORTDiscus covers many related sports medicine subjects, including nutrition, physical therapy, occupational health and therapy, exercise physiology, kinesiology and more. In addition to journals and monographs, the database includes references to tens of thousands of dissertations and theses. International references are included from journal and magazine articles, books, book chapters,
conference proceedings and more.

Psychosocial

PsycNET (with PsycINFO) This link opens in a new window
APA PsycNET is an integrated collection of databases from the American Psychological Association (APA), including the following: PsycINFO, PsycBOOKS, PsycTESTS, PsycTHERAPY, PsycARTICLES, and PsycEXTRA.

PsycINFO, the most popular database in PsycNET, is a bibliographic index covering core literature in the psychological and behavioral sciences and their related disciplines. PsycBOOKS includes online versions of the APA Handbooks in Psychology Series, as well as other ebooks and online encyclopedias published by APA. PsycTESTS is a source of structured information about psychological tests and measures as well as a repository for the full text of select instruments. PsycTHERAPY provides access to streaming psychotherapy demonstration videos.

Altogether, PsycNET provides information about and access to journal articles, books and ebooks, dissertations, conference presentations, tests and measures, videos, gray literature, and many other other publication types in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences.
To search only a specific database (e.g., PsycINFO) within the PsycNET interface, use the "Select Databases" features at the top of the PsycNET landing page and check (or uncheck) the database(s) that apply.
PsycINFO via Ovid This link opens in a new window
PsycINFO via Ovid indexes core academic and professional literature in the psychological and behavioral sciences and their related disciplines. Coverage is from 1806 to the present. **Note that the database PsycINFO is also searchable on APA PsycNET platform.

Multidisciplinary Sources with OT Coverage

Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new window
Web of Science Core Collection is a multidisciplinary citation index that includes scholarly articles, conference proceedings, and books in the biomedical, psychosocial, and arts and humanities. The collections contain Science Citation, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts and Humanities Citation Index , Conference Proceedings Citation Index, Book Citation Index, Emerging Sources Citation Index and Current Chemical Reactions index.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is a multidisciplinary index of peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Central is a large, multidisciplinary database with over 11,000 titles, with over 8,000 titles in full-text. It serves as the central resource for researchers at all levels in all markets. Over 160 subjects areas are covered extensively in this product including business and economics, health and medical, news and world affairs, technology, social sciences and more.
Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
Dissertations and Theses Global contains indexes, dissertations and some theses. Full-text is available for many dissertations and theses, including those from NYU.

Education and Social Sciences

Education Source with ERIC This link opens in a new window
Education Source with ERIC provides access to research on all levels of education from early childhood to adult education. The content includes peer reviewed journal articles, ebooks, book reviews, dissertations, conference papers and policy reports on all topics in the realm of education.
SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window
SocINDEX covers the sociology literature, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study. It indexes scholarly journals, books, monographs, and conference papers.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Sociological Abstracts represents the core database for sociological scholarship, covering literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. It indexes scholarly journals, dissertations and theses, books, and conference papers and proceedings, and is international in scope.

What is Google Scholar? How should I use it?

Google Scholar is a time-saving, scholarly search interface. With Google Scholar, you can locate scholarly journal articles, books and book sections. For literature searching, specialized databases have more functionality and access more comprehensive results, but Google Scholar is a good tool to use for a search for a known item.

You can configure Google Scholar to:

Display a link to NYU options for the full-text of an article
Export your citations to RefWorks or EndNote

Here's how to display NYU links in Google Scholar:

Open scholar.google.com
Go to the left screen, 3 bars, "Settings"
Click on menu item, "Library Links"
Type in: NYU
From the results, put a check mark next to "New York University Libraries-GetIt at NYU"
Click on Save to save preferences.

The next time you search scholar.google.com, the GetIt at NYU option will be available next to accessible article citations.

Here's how to change settings for Bibliography manager:

Open scholar.google.com
Go to the left screen, 3 bars, "Settings"
In the Search Results, go to Bibliography Manager
Select Show Links to import citation into: (your choice of bibliography manager, BibTex, Refworks, Endnote, etc.)
Click on Save to save preferences.