PAHO Digital Library

Name

Coverage (scope)

Main characteristics

BIREME – Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information

International

Americas, Caribbean Region and African Portuguese speaking countries

The Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME/PAHO/WHO) is a specialized PAHO center whose mission is to contribute to development of health in LA&C countries through the democratization of access, publishing and use of information, knowledge and scientific evidence.
Main products are the Virtual Health Library, LILACS and DeCS.

NLM – National Library of Medicine

Global

United States of America

NLM has been a center of information innovation since its founding in 1836.
The world’s largest biomedical library, NLM maintains and makes available a vast print collection and produces electronic information resources on a wide range of topics that are searched billions of times each year by millions of people around the globe.
Main products: PubMed, MEDLINE, MESH and NLM Classification.

DCMI – Dublin Core Metatada Initiative

Global

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, or "DCMI", is an open organization supporting innovation in metadata design and best practices across the metadata ecology. DCMI's activities include work on architecture and modeling, discussions and collaborative work in DCMI Communities and DCMI Task Groups, global conferences, meetings and workshops, and educational efforts to promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and best practices.
DCMI maintains a number of formal and informal liaisons and relationships with standards bodies and other metadata organizations.
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is an open organization managed as a project of ASIS&T, a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.

IFLA – International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions

Global

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession.
Founded in 1927 in Edinburgh, Scotland at an international conference, we celebrate our 90th birthday in 2017. We now have more than 1,400 Members in over 140 countries around the world. IFLA was registered in the Netherlands in 1971. The Royal Library, the national library of the Netherlands, in The Hague, generously provides the facilities for our headquarters.

Library of Congress (USA)

United States of America

The Library of Congress occupies three buildings on Capitol Hill. The Thomas Jefferson Building (1897) is the original separate Library of Congress building. (The Library began in 1800 inside the U.S. Capitol.) The John Adams Building was built in 1938 and the James Madison Memorial Building was completed in 1981.
Today's Library of Congress is an unparalleled world resource. The collection of more than 164 million items includes more than 38.6 million cataloged books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 70 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America; and the world's largest collection of legal materials, films, maps, sheet music and sound recordings.

Name

Coverage (scope)

Main characteristics

Virtual Health Library

(BIREME/PAHO/WHO)

International

Americas, Caribbean Region and African Portuguese speaking countries

The Virtual Health Library (VHL) was established in 1998 as a model, strategy and operating platform for technical cooperation of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) for management of health information and knowledge in the LA&C Region.
The VHL is a Network of Networks built collectively and coordinated by BIREME.

Global Index Medicus

World Health Organization

International

The Global Index Medicus (GIM) published under the auspices of World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Offices, gives access to bibliographical information and in some cases to full text of health material published locally.
It has been compiled to complement the internationally known bibliographical indexes such as MEDLINE, considering that important and valuable medical and health documents from countries outside the major industrialized areas are not included.

Name

Coverage (scope)

Main characteristics

LILACS

Regional

Latin America and the Caribbean Region

Bibliographic index of literature on health sciences, published in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1982. It is a cooperative product of the VHL Network, which currently indexes articles from more than 900 magazine titles from 19 countries of Latin America and Caribbean. LILACS also indexes other types of scientific and technical literature such as thesis, monographs, books and book chapters. papers presented at congresses or conferences, reports, government publications and regional international organizations
Check also My VHL

MedCarib

Caribbean Region

MedCarib - Contains information on all aspects on health and medicine relating to the English speaking Caribbean and Suriname. Produced by the Medcarib Network for which the Medical Library is the Regional Coordinating Centre.

PubMed

International

MEDLINE is the U.S. National Library of Medicine® (NLM) premier bibliographic database that contains more than 24 million references to journal articles in life sciences with a concentration on biomedicine.
MEDLINE is the primary component of PubMed®, part of the Entrez series of databases.
Time coverage: includes literature published from 1966 to present, and selected coverage of literature prior to that period. See OLDMEDLINE Data for coverage details about the pre-1966 citations that are not comprehensive for that time period.

Repository of search strategies on the VHL

(BIREME/PAHO/WHO)

Regional

Latin America and the Caribbean Region

Set of VHL search strategies originally prepared by BIREME to support the definition of VHL thematic areas, health promotion campaigns and scientific studies, among other applications.
Anyone can access and use the search strategies to retrieve scientific and technical information in VHL, which includes over than 60 data bases in health.

LEYES

Regional

Latin America and the Caribbean Region

LEYES is a regional database on legislation. It is produced by different institutions from the health and legislation areas which are part of LEYES Network and coordinated by HSS/HP fom PAHO/WHO. and BIREME/PAHO/WHO.
It has bibliographic references on health legislation from more than thiry countries from Latin America and Caribbean. In some case it also has the URL to access the full text of documents.

PLOS

International

Mainly on Biology, Medicine, Genetics, Neglected and Tropical diseases and pathogens

PLOS was founded in 2001 as a nonprofit Open Access publisher, innovator and advocacy organization with a mission to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication.
PLOS publishes a suite of peer-reviewed Open Access journals featuring quality research, expert commentary and critical analysis across all areas of science and medicine. Each journal is editorially independent and specialized with regard to both its selection criteria and breadth of content.

Name

Coverage (scope)

Main characteristics

PAHO Digital Library (PAHO IRIS)

Regional

PAHO HQ, Country Offices and Centers (including the former ones)

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Institutional Repository’s mission is to manage, preserve, and disseminate the knowledge generated by the technical areas of the Organization, including its Headquarters, Country Offices, and Pan American centers.

WHO Digital Library (WHO IRIS)

International

WHO Regional Offices literature

World Health Organization global digital library which provides online access to WHO published material.

United Nations Digital Library

International

UN bodies, documents and multimedia

In this library users will find UN documents and publications, images and sounds, speeches and UN Bodies documents.

Inter-American Bank of Development (Repository of Institutional Knowledge)

Regional Americas Region

BRIK, the Bank Repository of Institutional Knowledge, is the new home for all IDB knowledge products. These include books, working papers, technical notes, discussion papers, annual reports and many more.
For IDB members, BRIK provides single-point access to the knowledge products of the Bank. Employees no longer need to look in multiple places or depend on your network of contacts to find the knowledge the Bank's produces.

World Bank Repository (Open Knowledge Repository)

International

The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) is The World Bank’s official open access repository for its research outputs and knowledge products.

Name

Coverage (scope)

Main characteristics

DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals

International

DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. DOAJ is independent. All funding is via donations, 50% of which comes from sponsors and 50% from members and publisher members. All DOAJ services are free of charge including being indexed in DOAJ. All data is freely available.

Portal of Journals on Health Sciences

Regional

Latin America and the Caribbean Region

Shaped as a catalog, this portal offers a comprehensive list of titles of more than 12k journals in list. Several of them maybe de indexed in LILACS or even MEDLINE. From this catalog the user can check the availability of the journal either in hard or digital media.

SciELO Public Health

Regional/Ibero-American

SciELO Public Health is an electronic library online covering health science articles published by scientific journals. Its primary goal is to provide universal and integrated access to scientific journals in the health science area within Ibero-american countries.
SciELO Public Health library uses SciELO methodology which has been developed as a joint venture project by FAPESP - Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo and BIREME - Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME/PAHO/WHO) is a specialized PAHO.

Name

Coverage (scope)

Main characteristics

My NCBI

(powered by NLM/NIH)

Save searches & automatic e-mail alerts
Display format preferences
Filter options
My Bibliography & NIH public access policy compliance • SciENcv: a researcher biosketch profile service
Highlighting search terms
Recent activity searches & records for 6 months
LinkOut, document delivery service & outside tool selections

My VHL (Mi BVS)

(powered by BIREME/PAHO/WHO)

Creation of collections of documents selected from the VHL
Definition of topics of interest to receive alerts of new documents
User publications retrieved through ORCID • VHL search history
List of favorite links

Format

Scope and main use:

Main characteristics

Vancouver Reference Style

The ICMJE Recommendations (journal articles)

International

Commonly in medicine and science. Main databases using this style are: PubMed and MEDLINE

The Vancouver Style is formally known as Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (ICMJE Recommendations). It was developed in Vancouver in 1978 by editors of medical journals and well over 1,000 medical journals (including ICMJE members BMJ, CMAJ, JAMA & NEJM) use this style.
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) offers guidance to authors in its publication Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (ICMJE Recommendations), which was formerly the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts. The recommended style for references is based on the National Information Standards Organization NISO Z39.29-2005 (R2010) Bibliographic References as adapted by the National Library of Medicine for its databases

Chicago Manual of Style

International

Commonly in social science publications and most historical journals

Now in its 17th edition, The Chicago Manual of Style—with more than a thousand pages in print or more than two thousand hyperlinked paragraphs online—has become the authoritative reference work for authors, editors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, designers, and publishers. This hundred-plus- year evolution has taken place under the ongoing stewardship of Chicago’s renowned editorial staff, aided by suggestions and requests from the Manual’s many readers.
Typically, Chicago style presents two basic documentation systems: (1) notes and bibliography and (2) author-date. Choosing between the two often depends on subject matter and the nature of sources cited, as each system is favored by different groups of scholars.

APA Citation Style

American Psychological Association

International

Also used in Public Health and Medicine journals

Style originated in 1929, when a group of psychologists, anthropologists, and business managers convened and sought to establish a simple set of procedures, or style rules, that would codify the many components of scientific writing to increase the ease of reading comprehension.
It concerns uniform use of such elements as selection of headings, tone, and length, punctuation and abbreviations, presentation of numbers and statistics, construction of tables and figures, citation of references, and many other elements that are a part of a manuscript.

MLA

Modern Language Association

International / USA

Widely used in the humanities, especially in writing on language and literature

MLA (Modern Language Association) style for documentation is widely used in the humanities, especially in writing on language and literature. MLA style features brief parenthetical citations in the text keyed to an alphabetical list of works cited that appears at the end of the work.
Works today are published in a dizzying range of formats. On the Web, modes of publication are regularly invented, combined, and modified. MLA style was updated in 2016 to meet the challenges facing today’s researchers. Itrecommends one universal set of guidelines that writers can apply to any type of source. Entries in the list of works cited are composed of facts common to most works—the MLA core

elements. Works are cited in the text with brief parenthetical citations keyed to the list of works cited.

Name

Coverage (scope)

Main characteristics

EndNote

International

Good source for formatting bibliographies, finding full text, and searching for references
There is a free version (limited features) and paid version

Zotero

International

Zotero is free software that helps you collect, cite, and share research

To learn how to use Zotero free version within PUBMED please contact libraryhq@paho.org (from personal laptops)

International

Mendeley

Good source for formatting bibliographies, finding full text, and searching for references

Format

Scope and main use:

Main characteristics

Pan American Journal of Public Health (PAJPH)

Instructions for authors

Regional

Public Health and priority issues of the Americas

Established in 1922, it is a peer reviewed, free and open access, which accepts paper written in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
The Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública/Pan American Journal of Public Health (RPSP/PAJPH) is an open access, peer-reviewed journal, published as the flagship scientific and technical periodical publication by the Pan American Health Organization.

The WHO Bulletin

Instructions for authors

International health with a special focus on developing countries

Since it was first published in 1948, it has become one of the world’s leading public health journals. In keeping with its mission statement, the peer-reviewed monthly maintains an open- access policy so that the full contents of the journal and its archives are available online free of charge.

The ICMJE Recommendations

International

Commonly used by Scientific Journal on Sciences, Medicine and Public Health

ICMJE developed these recommendations to review best practice and ethical standards in the conduct and reporting of research and other material published in medical journals, and to help authors, editors, and others involved in peer review and biomedical publishing create and distribute accurate, clear, reproducible, unbiased medical journal articles. The recommendations may also provide useful insights into the medical editing and publishing process for the media, patients and their families, and general readers.

EQUATOR

Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research

International

The EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network is an international initiative that seeks to improve the reliability and value of published health research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting and wider use of robust reporting guidelines.
It is the first coordinated attempt to tackle the problems of inadequate reporting systematically and on a global scale; it advances the work done by individual groups over the last 15 years.

CONSORT Group - Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials

International

The main product of CONSORT is the CONSORT Statement, which is an evidence-based, minimum set of recommendations for reporting randomized trials. It offers a standard way for authors to prepare reports of trial findings, facilitating their complete and transparent reporting, and aiding their critical appraisal and interpretation.
The CONSORT Statement comprises a 25-item checklist and a flow diagram. The checklist items focus on reporting how the trial was designed, analyzed, and interpreted; the flow diagram displays the progress of all participants through the trial.

STROBE - Strengthening the Reporting of Observational studies in Epidemiology

International

Commonly used by Scientific Journal on Sciences, Medicine and Public Health

STROBE stands for an international, collaborative initiative of epidemiologists, methodologists, statisticians, researchers and journal editors involved in the conduct and dissemination of observational studies.
The STROBE Statement is being endorsed by a growing number of biomedical journals.

Declaration of Helsinki

World Medical Association (WMA)

International

Widely used by biomedical journals

The World Medical Association (WMA) has developed the Declaration of Helsinki as a statement of ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects, including research on identifiable human material and data.
The Declaration is intended to be read as a whole and each of its constituent paragraphs should be applied with consideration of all other relevant paragraphs.
Consistent with the mandate of the WMA, the Declaration is addressed primarily to physicians. The WMA encourages others who are involved in medical research involving human subjects to adopt these principles.

Format

Mainly used in

Main characteristics

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

For authors

International

Countries with free access to Cochrane Library: ARG, BOL, ECU, GUY, PRY and SUR

Cochrane is a global independent network of researchers, professionals, patients, careers, and people interested in health.
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) is the leading resource for systematic reviews in health care. The CDSR includes Cochrane Reviews (the systematic reviews) and protocols for Cochrane Reviews as well as editorials. The CDSR also has occasional supplements. The CDSR is updated regularly as Cochrane Reviews are published ‘when ready’ and form monthly issues; see publication schedule.

EMBASE

International

PAHO Staff interested on search in EMBASE please contact libraryhq@paho.org

For users looking for adverse drug events, drug efficacy studies, medical device and disease-related biomedical research information, Embase delivers immediate access to a range of intuitive search tools that help them find exact answers to their research questions quickly and easily.
•Uncover drug-disease relationships and drug-drug interactions – Discover more biomedical evidence by searching comprehensive, relevant and up-to- date biomedical research.
•Monitor literature for adverse events more efficiently – Adverse events are much easier and faster to identify using the world's most comprehensive biomedical literature database.

Name of the resource

Coverage (scope)

Main characteristics

DeCS

Regional

Latin America and the Caribbean Region

The trilingual and structured DeCS vocabulary- Health Sciences Subject Headings - was created by BIREME to be used in the indexing of scientific journals articles, books, congress proceedings, technical reports, and other types of materials, as well as for searching and retrieving subjects from scientific literature in LILACS, MEDLINE and other data bases.

MESH

International

MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) is the NLM controlled vocabulary thesaurus used for indexing articles for PubMed

Library of Congress Authorities

International/USA

Using Library of Congress Authorities, you can browse and view authority headings for Subject, Name, Title and Name/Title combinations; and download authority records in MARC format for use in a local library system. This service is offered free of charge.

Format

Scope and main use

Main characteristics

LILACS methodology

Bibliographic databases such as LILACS and national databases of the Latin American countries following the VHL/LILACS model

LILACS methodology is a Virtual Health Library component and is composed by standards, manuals and softwares, which guide the identification, selection, bibliographic description, document indexing and databases development.
Currently, LILACS System is integrated by the following databases: LILACS, BBO, BDENF, MEDCARIB and national databases of the Latin American countries.

Dublin Core

Bibliographic databases and scientific/institutional repositories

The word "metadata" means "data about data". Metadata articulates a context for objects of interest -- "resources" such as MP3 files, library books, or satellite images -- in the form of "resource descriptions".
As a tradition, resource description dates back to the earliest archives and library catalogs. The modern "metadata" field that gave rise to Dublin Core and other recent standards em

MARC 21

Bibliographic databases and scientific/institutional repositories

MARC 21 is the product of the integration of USMARC, UKMARC and CANMARC (Canadian MARC). It is the most extensively used MARC format in the world and a de facto standard. It has been designed to be both a production format and an exchange format. There are five MARC 21 formats: Bibliographic, Authorities, Holdings, Classification, and Community Information.
The current maintenance agency for MARC 21 is the Library of Congress.