Smart researchers start by looking in the right place.The right place is a subject-specific index that covers the literature in your field. Below are the indexes I recommend for medical anthropology. As you might expect, they include databases that cover the discipline of anthropology, and databases that index medicine and related scientific fields.
The databases below are just a selection of the what's available for finding published work in your subject or discipline. Feel free to explore others!
The Web of science interface to Medline, the primary source of world-wide literature on biomedicine and health care.
Medline provides access to bibliographic information that includes MEDLINE, OLDMEDLINE, as well as:
The out-of-scope citations (e.g., articles on plate tectonics or astrophysics) from certain MEDLINE journals, primarily general science and chemistry journals, for which the life sciences articles are indexed for MEDLINE.
Citations that precede the date that a journal was selected for MEDLINE indexing.
Some additional life science journals that submit full text to PubMedCentral and receive a qualitative review by NLM.
Medline's in-process records provide basic citation information and abstracts before the citations are indexed with NLM's MeSH Terms and added to MEDLINE.
Index of journal articles in anthropology and related fields. The primary index for research in anthropology, it includes articles, reports, edited works, and obituaries in social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology, as well as in ethnology, archaeology, folklore, and material culture.
Citation database covering scholarly journal literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Search interface allows cross-searching of BIOSIS Previews, Medline, Zoological Record, Web of Science Core Collection, and others.
Users can search by cited reference, author, topic, publication name, and more. Results can be analyzed by document type, institution name, source title, and subject area.
If you created an optional Web of Science personal account with your @indiana.edu email address, you will need to update your account to your @iu.edu email address before December 31, 2025.
OneSearch@IU searches most of the Libraries' databases. It is a great place to start your research.
Direct access at: libraries.indiana.edu/databases/onesearch
More databases can be found on the Libraries homepage under the "Research" tab or the "Featured Databases" located at the bottom of the page.