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Searching Embase® for COVID-19 therapy articles

As the amount of COVID-19 evidence grows, it is important to be able to zero in on a specific type of evidence. With the abundance of editorials and commentaries on COVID-19, it may be helpful for clinicians and researchers to focus on finding articles that report specifically on COVID-19 therapeutic interventions. These and other article types are currently available through various resources, including curated COVID-19 collections that contain primary study reports and evidence syntheses. However, databases like Embase® offer benefits such as advanced searching features and unique content from a wide variety of scholarly journals.

This post will walk you through searching in Embase® (Elsevier) for COVID-19-related randomized controlled trials (RCTs), which are typically regarded as the ideal study design for therapeutic interventions.

About Embase®

Embase® is a biomedical database with emphasis on European pharmaceutical and psychiatric literature. The database contains article citations and abstracts, with links to article full text where available. Note that Embase® contains research that has been accepted for publication in scholarly journals; it does not contain pre-/post-prints or unpublished clinical trial data related to COVID-19.

Pre-developed COVID-19 search strings

To save you both time and effort, pre-developed COVID-19 search strings are ready for you to copy and paste into various databases, including Embase®. The following resources include COVID-19 search strings developed specifically for Embase®:

• Medical Library Association (MLA): COVID-19 Literature Searches
• Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH): CADTH COVID-19 Search Strings
  Note: You will need to copy and paste the search one line at a time.
• Nova Scotia Health Library Services: COVID-19 Search Strategies

Searching Embase® for COVID-19 RCTs

1. Copy a pre-developed COVID-19 search string for Embase® from one of the above resources.
2. Select Embase® from Library Services’ Databases A-Z page.
3. On the Embase® homepage, paste the pre-developed COVID-19 search string into the top search bar.

4. Click on the Show…results button on the right-hand side.
5. From the Results Filters on the left, click on the Study types drop-down menu.
6. Select randomized controlled trial (not randomized controlled trial topic).

7. Click on the Apply button at the top of the Results Filters panel.
8. Before browsing the search results, you may want to select Show all abstracts (A) or change the Sort by order (B) from the top of the results list, depending on your preferences.

9. To view the full text of an article, click on View Full Text.

10. If full text is not available, click on Check for full text at NSHA, then Request document via Local Document Delivery System to request a copy of the article.

For more COVID-19 resources, see our COVID-19 Research guide.

Questions? Email AskLibrary@nshealth.ca or book a consultation with a library staff member.

Kristy Hancock

Librarian Educator