Research Guides: Biochemistry Research Guide: What are databases?

What are Databases?

A database is an organized collection of data, generally stored and accessed electronically from a computer system. For our purposes a database is a commercially published collection of articles, books etc. so that they can be accessed through various indexes like Author, Subject etc.

NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information)
The NCBI houses a series of databases relevant to biotechnology and biomedicine and is an important resource for bioinformatics tools and services. Major databases include GenBank for DNA sequences and PubMed, a bibliographic database for the biomedical literature. Other databases include the NCBI Epigenomics database.
PubMed (.gov)
Citations for biomedical literature life science journals, and online books. MEDLINE is the largest subset of PubMed.
SciFinder-n
SciFinder-n provides online access to Chemical Abstracts (1907-present) and other chemical databases. Includes indexing for chemical journals, patents, chemical substances, and chemical reactions. Requires individual registration.
Web of Science
Access to science, social sciences, and arts and humanities citation indexes. This includes journal articles, conference proceedings and books.