The Cochrane Library is collection of high quality medical databases to help inform health care decision making.  

Not all of the databases have full text.  It is still worthwhile to look at those resources. If you find an article that does not have full text, please submit a document delivery request and we will see if we can obtain a copy for you.  

The different databases in the Cochrane Library

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

These are systematic reviews that go through a rigorous research and peer review process before being published making them the gold standard for systematic reviews.  This database has full text access to the systematic reviews.

To locate these after performing a search, look just above the results list for Cochrane Reviews and click on that to limit the results to them.

Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL)

This database is a randomized and quasi-randomized controlled trials.  The records are pulled from databases like PubMed and Embase.  Pubmed and Embase are two of the largest medical bibliographic databases.  When searching in there, you will find the bibliographic information like the author, publication source, date, etc and sometimes an abstract. This means that they do not have the full text of the items found there.  

To locate these after performing a search, look just above the results list for Trials and click on that to limit the results to them.

Cochrane Clinical Answers

Is a collection of summaries from different Cochrane reviews.  They are designed to be actionable point of care resources. A Cochrane Clinical Answer has a question question with a short answer and a summary from the Cochrane Reviewed deemed most appropriate to answer the clinical question.

To locate these after performing a search, look just above the results list for More and click on that.  Then, click on Clinical Answers to limit the results to that.