Embase
Elsevier's biomedical index — the systematic reviewer's other database.
At a Glance
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Coverage
44M+ records from 8,500+ journals, biomedical and pharmacological, with strong European and conference-abstract coverage
- Access
institutional subscription
- Free alternative
- PubMed / Europe PMC
- Regional
global, notably stronger than PubMed on European and non-U.S. journals
Our Take
Embase is PubMed’s essential complement for systematic reviews and pharmacovigilance — it indexes thousands of journals and conference abstracts PubMed doesn’t, with particular depth in drugs, devices, and European literature, all under the Emtree thesaurus. Best practice for a rigorous review is to search both, precisely because their coverage only partly overlaps. It’s subscription-only, which is the main barrier. Use it alongside PubMed for any comprehensive biomedical search; the extra recall is exactly where reviews get their completeness.
Power Tips
- Search Embase and PubMed both for a systematic review — Embase’s unique journals and conference abstracts are where you close coverage gaps
- use Emtree terms with explosion for sensitivity, then dedup the combined set (ASySD or Zotero) with source tags for PRISMA (Issue 3).
Alternatives & Complements
PubMed · Europe PMC · Cochrane Library · Scopus.
Figures last verified: August 16, 2026