Resources

How has CAM benefited you? We want to know.

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Databases

CAM Specific

Acubriefs
Acubriefs is a comprehensive database of references on acupuncture in the English language. References on acupuncture in languages other than English may be available.  Over the past several years abstracts from the leading Chinese journals have been translated into English and are available in the database. 
(Open access. Paid membership allows access to citations after 2006)
 
Alt Health Watch
Includes full text from a wide range of complementary and alternative medicine journals. 
(Subscription required)
 
AMED: Alternative and Complementary Medicine
Covers a range of complementary and alternative journals.
(Subscription required)
 
American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) Information Center
The Information Center includes current and archived citation lists on massage therapy topics. The information is categorized under headings such as "Research Citations", "Research Archives" and "Current Research".
(Open access)
 
The NHS Priorities/CAMEOL Project is a joint project between the Research Council for Complementary Medicine (RCCM) and the School of Integrated Health, University of Westminster (UoW), London and University of Plymouth, UK. The CAMEOL database contained reviews of evidence of CAM therapies.
(Open access)
 
The Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Specialist Library is a unique resource which aims to provide access to good quality, up-to-date, relevant information on complementary and alternative medicine. The content of the library is intended primarily for health professionals, CAM practitioners and researchers, but the majority of the information is also accessible by patients, carers and the general public.
(Open access)
 
CAIRSS
CAIRSS for Music is a bibliographic database of research literature in music education, music psychology, music therapy, and music medicine.
(Open access)
 
CAM on PubMed (complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) subset of PubMed.)
NCCAM and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) have partnered to create CAM on PubMed, a subset of NLM's PubMed. PubMed provides access to citations from the MEDLINE database and additional life science journals. It also includes links to many full-text articles at journal Web sites and other related Web resources.
(Open access)
 
Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research Guidelines & Reviews                                                                    
Traditional Medicine and Complementary/Alternative MedicineList of Guidelines, and reviews relevant to complementary and alternative medicine
Open access)
 
HerbMed                                                                                                                                         
An interactive, electronic herbal database – provides hyperlinked access to the scientific data underlying the use of herbs for health. It is an evidence-based information resource for professionals, researchers, and general public.
(Open access)
 
HerbMedProTM                                         
Herb Med Pro is the professional version of HerbMedPro® This enhanced version provides access to the entire database with continuous updating as the information is being compiled.
(Subscription required)
 
A library and information service dedicated to the research and practice of homeopathy. The database contains literature references to homoeopathy, with key terms and some abstracts.
(Open access)

Index to Chiropratic Literature (ICL)
The ICL was founded by the Chiropractic Library Association and it's main goal is to provided cover-to-cover indexing of peer reviewed journals from chiropractic publishers.  The site includes a list of publications that are indexed by ICL as well as a list of non-peer reviewed chiropractic publications and where they are indexed. 
(Open access)
 
The International Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements (IBIDS) database provides access to bibliographic citations and abstracts from published, international, and scientific literature on dietary supplements. Users can choose to search the Full IBIDS Database, a subset of Consumer Citations Only or Peer Reviewed Citations Only.
(Open access)
 
ChiroACCESS was designed for doctors, students, faculty and other health professionals in the field of chiropractic. The purpose of ChiroACCESS is to advance research and to provide timely and accurate information to chiropractic physicians so that they can administer state of the art patient care.
(Subscription required)
 
Massage Therapy Research Databasesm
The Massage Therapy Research Database contains citations of peer reviewed research literature about massage therapy. As of 2006 only non-Medline indexed journals are included as a new feature has been added to the website: live PubMed searches on a variety of massage therapy topics. 
(Open access but requires free registration)
 
Medicines Complete 
Provides access to Dietary Supplements and Herbal Medicines.  Dietary Supplements is an essential reference source for pharmacists, dieticians, CAM practitioners and other health professionals looking for up-to-date information on safety and efficacy. Herbal Medicines is designed for healthcare professionals, Herbal Medicines addresses the issues of quality, safety and efficacy by providing scientifically rigorous, impartial, evidence-based, information on medicinal herbs.
(Subscription required)
 
Produced by the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy, NAPRALERT sm is a relational database of all natural products, including ethnomedical information, pharmacological/biochemical information of extracts of organisms in vitro, in situ, in vivo, in humans (case reports, non-clinical trials) and clinical studies. Similar information is available for secondary metabolites from natural sources.
Cost per download)
 
Information on brand name products and ingredients.
(Subscription required)
 
The Natural Standard Database provides high quality, evidence-based information about complementary and alternative therapies. Monographs on herbs & supplements, conditions and alternative modalities outline the level of evidence available for each. Full and summarized monographs are available and the references are linked to PubMed.
(Subscription required)
 
The Qigong & Energy Medicine Database™ provides the only information in English that records the vast clinical and experimental research on Qigong and Energy Medicine. The Qigong & Energy Medicine Database™ has been updated to contain references not only to Qigong but also to several alternative therapies that implicitly depend upon Qi - the vital life-force energy of the body/mind.
(Pay to view abstracts)
 
This is a unique source of worldwide scientific research concerning the biological activity of essential oils and their components.
It has been researched, compiled and written by Bob Harris of Essential Oil Resource Consultants (EORC). Within the Essential Oil Research Database you will currently find the bibliographic references and abstracts of 1000 published scientific, peer reviewed research papers and case reports sourced from over 200 publications. 
(Subscription required) 

GENERAL DATABASES

The Cochrane Collaboration                                                                                             
The Cochrane Library consists of a regularly updated collection of evidence-based medicine databases, including The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 
(Subscription required, Open access in some countries )
 
PubMed provides access to bibliographic information that includes MEDLINE, as well as: (1)The out-of-scope from certain MEDLINE journals, primarily general science and chemistry journals, for which the life sciences articles are indexed for MEDLINE. (2) Citations that precede the date that a journal was selected for MEDLINE indexing. (3) Some additional life science journals that submit full text to PubMedCentral and receive a qualitative review by NLM.
(Open access)
 
CINAHL®, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, is the most comprehensive resource for nursing and allied health literature. Includes citations from the following areas: nutrition and dietetics,alternative and complementary medicine, behavioural medicine, biomedicine, chiropractic.
(Subscription required)
 
EMBASE is a biomedical database produced by Elsevier. The database contains bibliographic records with citations, abstracts and indexing derived from biomedical articles in peerreviewed journals, and is especially strong in its coverage of drug and pharmaceutical research. EMBASE is current and updated daily on most platforms. Records appear in the database, on average, within two weeks of receipt of the original journal. EMBASE covers nearly 5,000 active journals, of which nearly 2,000 are unique compared with MEDLINE.
(Subscription required)
 
PsycINFO is an abstract database of psychological literature from the 1800s to the present. An essential tool for researchers, PsycINFO combines a wealth of content with precise indexing so you can get just what you need easily. Source for literature related to mind body therapies.
(Subscription required)