Tools for PDQ1 scientific/biomedical/clinical literature searching

Searching the vast and ever growing array of articles in the international scientific, biomedical and medical literature cannot now be undertaken without the aid of tools – "search engines" – that look for and retrieve the required items quickly and, hopefully, without cost. While no single search engine is perfect there are now a number on the Internet that are useful, convenient to use and simple to operate, others are also available that allow much more sophisticated searches and downloading facilities over a very wide range of literature. This article describes such a selection. Keywords: search enginesgray literatureMeSH termscontrolled search termsgooglegoogle scholarPubMedCochrane reviewsJane (journal/author name estimator)World of KnowledgeWorld of ScienceScopusReleMedreference management software Notes 1. Pretty damn quick!