Hi all,

This is probably a question more for the medical/biological scientists out there, but anyone's opinions would be most welcome. I currently use Ovid MedLine for literature searches, but have used Web of Science in the past. Seeing as now would be a good time to change if necessary, can anyone give me pros/cons of either of these, and also which they prefer?

Thanks :-)

Matt

Hi Matt,

In my undergrad third year I was recommended by my sup to use Web of Science and I have been using it ever since. What I like about it is that I can list my searches based on relevance, number of times cited or by date. I'm not sure whether Ovid Medline is the same as Medline (Pubmed) but I've found that only to list my searches based on date. I find Web of Science easier to extract references to Endnote or other citation managers.

I can't really say much about Ovid as I haven't really used it, but Web of Science is my preference.

CB

Another Web of science user. I learnt to use it as an undergraduate and know how to do pretty much anything I want on is. Medline just confuses me! Plus WoS is now linked to the Uni library so you can click on there and can get to the pdf (assuming the library carries the jounral) with just a few clicks. No idea if you can also do that on medline/ovid.

Yeah, I'm thinking of making the switch to WoS. It seems a little less "good" in terms of the searches, but it seems to have a knack of giving me what I want - I suppose a bit like google vs some-crappy-search-engine. I might try to get acquainted with it though, as Ovid seems the default database for med schools to recommend.