We are very pleased to report the addition of Embase to our growing collection of resources supporting Mount Sinai's initiatives in translational research and evidence-based medicine. Embase, the online version of the print index Excerpta Medica, is an international biomedical and pharmacological database that covers the journal and conference literature. It has significant strengths in the areas of pharmaceutics, pharmacy and toxicology; occupational health; environmental health; alternative medicine; biotechnology; and occupational and environmental health. Embase covers over 7,000 journals, over 25% of which are not in MEDLINE.
Embase is known for its timely, in-depth indexing using Emtree, a hierarchically ordered controlled thesaurus. Emtree, like the MeSH vocabulary used to index MEDLINE, provides a consistent description of biomedical terminology. Emtree is noted for its rich vocabulary for drugs and chemicals, facilitating discovery of reports on drug combinations, adverse drug reactions, medical devices and trade names, drug trade names across the globe, and clinical studies and trials.
Because Embase covers journals not in MEDLINE, and because the Emtree indexing language offers additional avenues to identify reports on biomedical topics, Ebmase is usually needed for comprehensive literature searches, systematic reviews and meta-analyses. In particular, The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions recommends that Cochrane review teams search MEDLINE, Embase and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) to ensure that as many relevant studies as possible are identified.
Our version of Embase is delivered on the OvidSP platform. To access EMBASE, connect both on- and off-campus from the link on Levy Library's Databases page, and select it from the list of Frequently Used Databases at the top. Or, link directly to Embase here.
We're planning workshops on using Embase early next year, so stay tuned to our postings of upcoming classes. In the meantime, OvidSP offers detailed information about searching EMBASE on their platform here. And as always, we encourage you to Ask a Librarian.

