Research Guides: Physical Therapy: Find Articles / Databases

Academic Search Complete

A comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database, with more than 5,300 full text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. Offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,300 journals and a total of 10,900 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. Features PDF content going back as far as 1865, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format.
Updated daily.

CINAHL Plus with Full Text

CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) is a resource for finding nursing and allied health literature: journals, books, pamphlets, audiovisuals, software, research instruments, nursing dissertations, evidence based care sheets, etc. and provides full text for 391 journals, plus legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, drug records, research instruments and clinical trials.
Coverage: 1937 to present.

PubMed@CSULB

Provides access to MEDLINE, Pre-MEDLINE, additional life science journals, and molecular biology databases; when articles have no free full text use Get It@CSULB. Coverage: Medline covers 1940's to present. Updated daily.

Cochrane Library

A collection of 6 databases that provide reliable and up-to-date information about the effects of health care treatments (interventions) and prevention and 2 additional databases that describe the Cochrane Collaboration as an organization. Much of the information is presented in the form of systematic reviews (Cochrane reviews) for practitioners, patients and policy makers.
Coverage: 1996 to present.
Updated quarterly.

PEDro

PEDro is the Physiotherapy Evidence Database. PEDro is a free database of over 18,000 randomised trials, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines in physiotherapy. For each trial, review or guideline, PEDro provides the citation details, the abstract and a link to the full text, where possible. All trials on PEDro are independently assessed for quality. These quality ratings are used to quickly guide users to trials that are more likely to be valid and to contain sufficient information to guide clinical practice. PEDro is produced by the Centre for Evidence-Based Physiotherapy at The George Institute for Global Health.

Start with These

Using a database will help you find scholarly and peer-reviewed articles & the last three will help you find evidence.

CINAHL Plus with Full Text This link opens in a new window Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature is a resource for finding nursing and allied health literature: journals, books, pamphlets, audiovisuals, software, research instruments, nursing dissertations, evidence based care sheets, etc. and provides full text for 391 journals, plus legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, drug records, research instruments and clinical trials. Coverage: 1937 to present.
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Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window A collection of 6 databases that provide reliable and up-to-date information about the effects of health care treatments (interventions) and prevention and 2 additional databases that describe the Cochrane Collaboration as an organization. Much of the information is presented in the form of systematic reviews (Cochrane reviews) for practitioners, patients and policy makers. Coverage: 1996 to present. Updated quarterly.
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Lippincott Advisor This link opens in a new window A collection of evidence-based content that provides practicing nurses with instant access to online references at the point of care. Allows users to identify the information they need by topic or category.
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LWW Nursing & Health Collection (via Ovid) This link opens in a new window LWW (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins) Nursing & Health Professions Premier Collection is a database of full-text articles from 70 LWW journals that is searchable using the Ovid interface.
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MEDLINE (via OVID) This link opens in a new window The National Library of Medicine's international bio-medicine & health journal database covering all areas of medicine, including dentistry, nursing, veterinary medicine, the health care system, preclinical sciences. The majority of the publications covered in MEDLINE are scholarly journals; a small number of newspapers, magazines, and newsletters considered useful to the discipline are included. Coverage: 1951 to present. Updated monthly.
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PEDro This link opens in a new window Physiotherapy Evidence Database
PubMed@CSULB This link opens in a new window Provides access to MEDLINE, Pre-MEDLINE, additional life science journals, and molecular biology databases. If articles have no free full text use Get It@CSULB. Medline covers 1940's to present, updated daily.
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SPORT Discus This link opens in a new window Links to articles from sports, physical fitness, physical education, kinesiology, college & university sport, rehabilitation, physical therapy, nutrition, recreation, leisure studies, sports law, tourism, health, and more. Includes items back to 1800.
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Also Useful

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database with more than 5,300 full text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. Offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,300 journals and a total of 10,900 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
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Biological Abstracts This link opens in a new window An expansive index to the world’s biology journal literature, with topics ranging from botany to microbiology to pharmacology. 1926 to present.
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PILOTS Database This link opens in a new window Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress (PILOTS) database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. and includes citations to all literature on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health sequelae of traumatic events 1871 - present. 
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PsycINFO This link opens in a new window Contains abstracts and bibliographic citations for the contents of thousands of journals. Also includes references to dissertations, media, and books. Coverage: 1887 to present. Updated quarterly.
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ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window Full text of Elsevier's journals, covering sciences, health, and social sciences since 1995 as well as indexing of other publisher's journals.
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Statista This link opens in a new window Reports that provide an aggregate of a variety of data, mainly statistics. Search for data by industry, political issue, consumerism, companies or countries. The data reports provide sourcing information.
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TOXLINE This link opens in a new window Produced by the National Library of Medicine, TOXLINE covers all areas of toxicology, including chemicals and pharmaceuticals, pesticides, environmental pollutants, and mutagens and teratogens.
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Web of Science This link opens in a new window Provides access to high-quality research from the world's leading arts, humanities, science and social science journals. Includes a Cited Reference search. Online coverage is 1993-present. Earlier print versions are in the library.
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Additional Resources

American Hospital Directory (currently only works on-campus) This link opens in a new window Provides online data (hospital financial information and utilization data) for over 6,000 hospitals.
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Annual Reviews This link opens in a new window Provides critical reviews of over fifty science, medicine, and social science topics. Reviews include what is supported, what is controversial and presents historical context and highlights the major questions that remain. Some coverage back to 1932.
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PsycARTICLES This link opens in a new window PsycArticles is a definitive source of searchable full-text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in psychology. The PsycArticles database covers general psychology and specialized, basic, applied, clinical and theoretical research. The database contains more than 40,000 articles from 53 journals - 45 published by the American Psychological Association (APA) and 8 from allied organizations. It includes all journal articles, letters to the editor and errata from each journal. Coverage: 1985 to present.
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PubMed Central This link opens in a new window PubMed Central is a digital archive of life sciences journal literature managed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). It is not a journal publisher. Access to PubMed Central (PMC) is free and unrestricted. The currency and age of material in PubMed Central varies by journal.
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Core Journals for Physical Therapy

The list below contains the core 16 journals for the field of physical therapy as identified in a 2011 JMLA article (Journal of the Medical Library Association), entitled: "Mapping the Core Journals of Physical Therapy Literature" by authors D. Fell, PT, MD, J. Burnham, MLS, AHIP, M. Buchanan, DPT, H. Horchen, DPT, and J. Scherr, DPT.

Journals are listed alphabetically.

(Click title for direct access).

Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Australian Journal of Physiotherapy
BMJ (British Medical Journal)
Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research
Clinical Rehabilitation
Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery
Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
Journal of the American Medical Association
The Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
Pain
Physical Therapy: Journal of the American Physical Therapy Association
Physiotherapy
Physiotherapy Canada (also titled Physiothérapie Canada)
Spine
Stroke

Searching Techniques

Databases might have different interfaces but remember they have similar functionality: search history, related topics/articles, cited by, save records, database accounts, limiters (e.g., language, document type, publication date).

See Searching Tips "tab" at top of screen