Electronic Literature Databases

NICE Evidence Search is a free-to-use web-based portal that provides access to authoritative clinical and non-clinical evidence and best practice in Health and Social Care. Sources of information include NICE Clinical Guidelines, Clinical Knowledge Summaries, eMedicines Compendium, the Cochrane Library and the BNF.  Please click here for access.

Medicines Compendium (eMC) provides free access to up-to-date, comprehensive and reliable information about prescription and over-the-counter medicines available in the UK.  Please click here for access. 

The Cochrane Library features seven databases containing information to support clinical interventions.  It is a major resource in Evidence-Based Medicine. 

• PubMed comprises more than 26 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals and online books.
• PubMed is free, but please log-in to Metalib using your UCL username and password to establish the SFX link to the full-text articles provided by UCL Library subscriptions.

• Embase is a biomedical and pharmacological database containing bibliographic records and abstracts of articles published in peer reviewed journals. The coverage of drug and pharmaceutical research is especially strong.
• Embase at UCL is supplied by resource aggregator Ovid SP.
• To gain access, please log into Metalib using your UCL username and password.
• Please download the Ovid User guide (pdf) for advice on how to search OVID-hosted databases effectively.

• International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (IPA) provides worldwide coverage of pharmaceutical science, pharmacy practice and health related literature from 1970 to the present.
• Produced in conjunction with the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, IPA contains over 350,000 references from conference proceedings and approximately 400 pharmacy-related journals.
• IPA at UCL is supplied by resource aggregator Ovid SP. To gain access, please log into Metalib using your UCL username and password.

• Web of Science^TM is a portal to several databases including Web of Science Core Collection, MEDLINE and BIOSIS Citations Index. 
• To gain access, please log into Metalib using your UCL username and password.

• Scopus is a large, multidisciplinary database containing over 67 millions records of peer-reviewed literature from book series, conference proceedings, trade publications and over 22,000 journal titles.
• To gain access off-site, log into Metalib using your UCL username and password.

SciFinder Scholar is the online version of Chemical Abstracts and includes the CAplus database and Medline. SciFinder Scholar provides access to journal references in over 9,000 journals and patent information from 50 patent issuing authorities. The full CAS Registry file (1947-date) containing the structures and dictionary information for the 24 million substances identified by the CAS Registry System is also included.To gain access, you will need to be logged onto a UCL computer or the network and register for an account.

Dictionary of Natural Products contains a comprehensive structure database of 156,000 natural products. It includes names and synonyms, formulae, chemical structures, CAS registry numbers, extensive source data, uses and applications, physical state, melting point, boiling point, pKa, and key literature citations.  Please click here for on-site access only.