Guides: Kinesiology: Databases & Journals

Start with These Databases

Academic Search Ultimate
Academic Search Ultimate is our largest multidisciplinary database of academic journals, magazines, periodicals, reports, books and videos.
Health Source - Nursing/Academic
Scholarly journals covering nursing and allied health topics including pediatric nursing, critical care, mental health, nursing management, medical law and more. Includes more than 320 full-text journals and a comprehensive medical dictionary.
Medline
Created by the United States National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE is an authoritative bibliographic database containing citations and abstracts for biomedical and health journals used by health care professionals, nurses, clinicians and researchers.
OneFile: Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine
Search a subset of Gale Academic OneFile journals covering the fields of physical therapy, physical fitness, and sports medicine. The database offers a wide spectrum of information, including proven treatment techniques, experimental research reports, and more.
Formerly called Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine Collection
APA PsycINFO
World's largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. Produced by the American Psychological Association, it includes more than 4 million bibliographic records and indexing of more than 2,500 journals.
PubMed Central
A free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine.

PubMed
PubMed comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
For search by Publication Type, see PubMed's subject term guide: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/pubtypes.html

Other Databases

Academic OneFile
Provides millions of articles from over 17,000 scholarly journals and other authoritative sources—including thousands of podcasts and transcripts from NPR and CNN as well as videos from BBC Worldwide Learning.
OneFile: Health and Medicine
More than 2,500 full-text periodicals, reference books, pamphlets, and hundreds of videos demonstrating medical procedures and live surgeries. Includes nursing and allied health journals, as well as personal health information sources.
Formerly called Health Reference Center Academic
Health Source - Consumer Edition
Consumer health articles and information

More online resources are available through the Boston Public Library. However, you must first take a minute to sign up for a BPL eCard.

Boston Public Library Science Resources

The authors of the article conducted their own original research.	The authors synthesize and analyze known research on a particular topic to discover trends.
Has a specific structure: introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references	Its structure can be changed depending on the topic studied.
Uses first and second person like "We discovered" or "I found" Refers primarily to "this study" (singular)	Uses third person like "they discovered" or "Choi and Wilson concluded" Refers to multiple studies
Its goal is to add a new contribution to scientific research.	Its goal is to summarize current research, draw connections, and show gaps needing further research.

Watch the video to learn more about review articles v primary research articles, how to tell the difference between the two, and why each is useful for research.

Identify a clear and narrow thesis statement.
Your thesis statement is your research roadmap. If specific and narrow, your thesis will guide exactly what kind of information you should find in your research. For example: A research paper about the effects of noise pollution from boating or shipping on marine mammals is more specific than the effects of ocean noise on marine ecosystems. With the narrower research topic, we know to look for information about boating or shipping travel, ocean noise pollution, and marine mammal auditory function.
Use scholarly sources for all stages of research, including definitions of terms.
Library resources that can help with introductory material, definitions, and quick facts are encyclopedias and dictionaries available in the Reference Room and online such as Credo Reference and Oxford Reference Online.
Use a variety of scholarly sources in your paper.
Do not rely on the same few resources throughout your paper. Instead, find a variety of scholarly sources that help to support your thesis. Use the Bibliographies of articles to review a list of scholarship published on your topic.
Start your research with primary sources.
Primary sources in scientific research are the actual research studies conducted by scientists within their field. These article should be easily identifiable by their clear sections: introduction, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion.
Always follow the trails of research from the information you consult.
If a popular source magazine article, a secondary source journal article, or reports produced by organizations mentions a research study, track down the studies mentioned in these publications to find the original research
Make sure all sources cited are relevant to your thesis.
If your paper is about ocean noises effects on marine life, do not cite noise impact on humans, unless you can make the case why this is relevant to include.

IDENTIFY KEYWORDS
The building block of a library database search is keywords. Keywords are central ideas or terms within your research question or problem.

BOOLEAN SEARCH OPERATORS
Once you have your keywords identified (2-3 is a good place to begin), you then need to connect them together in a way the database understands how to search. This is done using the Boolean search operators AND, OR, and NOT. Connecting keywords using these search operators creates a search string.

AND - narrow search, used to combine terms together and focus search results
OR - broad search, used to includes results that contain similar or like words, such as synonyms
NOT - narrow search by exclusion, used to exclude results containing a particular keyword

SEARCH STRINGS
We call the written version of your keywords with boolean search operators the search string. Writing your search string at the beginning of your research process will help you better approach searching in library databases.

Example search string
exercise OR physical activity AND high blood pressure OR hypertension AND treatment

Identify Keywords

The building block of a library database search is keywords. Keywords are central ideas or terms within your research question or problem.

Boolean Search Operators

Once you have your keywords identified (2-3 is a good place to begin), you then need to connect them together in a way the database understands how to search. This is done using the Boolean search operators AND, OR, and NOT. Connecting keywords using these search operators creates a search string.

AND - narrow search, used to combine terms together and focus search results (college and artificial intelligence)
OR - broad search, used to includes results that contain similar or like words, such as synonyms (ChatGPT or artificial intelligence)
NOT - narrow search by exclusion, used to exclude results containing a particular keyword (gaming not gambling)

Enter Keywords in Database Search

Enter your keywords, connected with the appropriate Boolean operator.
Use the filters to narrow your results. Peer reviewed and full text are automatically selected, but you may want to narrow the results to those published in the last 10 years.

Using Search Results

Sort your search results by Date Newest so the most current information on a subject is at the top of your results.
Use the "Cited by" or "Cited References" features contained in many library databases to view a list of resources that have cited the particular article currently being viewed in their own work or are contained within the Reference list of the current article being viewed.

Do not limit your search to just one database. Instead look at a variety of databases both subject specific and interdisciplinary to make sure you are viewing the full scope of literature published on your topic.

Learn about the PubMed database and how to use the query box and apply filters to search results to find relevant information on your topic.