Embase
Elsevier's biomedical index — pharmacology-deep and built for systematic reviews.
At a Glance
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Coverage
40M+ records from 8,500+ journals plus conference abstracts, with strong drug and European coverage; includes MEDLINE (verify current counts).
- Access
Institutional subscription.
- Free alternative
- PubMed for the MEDLINE core; Europe PMC.
- Regional
Global; deeper European and non-English biomedical coverage than PubMed.
Our Take
Embase is the other biomedical index that serious systematic reviewers run alongside PubMed — it includes MEDLINE but adds thousands of journals PubMed misses, conference abstracts, and notably deep drug and pharmacology indexing via its Emtree vocabulary. For a comprehensive, PRISMA-defensible search, Embase plus PubMed is close to mandatory in health research. The catch is cost: it is a paid Elsevier product where PubMed is free. Use it to widen a biomedical review beyond PubMed, especially for drugs and European literature.
Power Tips
- Search Emtree terms and use explode for comprehensive drug and disease reviews.
- Run Embase and PubMed together — Embase’s extra journals and conference abstracts catch what MEDLINE misses.
- Capture conference abstracts here for grey-literature completeness in a review.
Alternatives & Complements
PubMed, Europe PMC, Cochrane Library, Scopus
Figures last verified: June 15, 2026