Searching for information on toxicological data of chemical substances in selected bibliographic databases — Selection of essential databases for toxicological researches

By using information from printed and online database guides, 18 online bibliographic databases (BD), which cover literature on toxicology were selected from 5 hosts. A search for literature containing information on three selected chemicals was carried out with each of the databases, and the number of documents relevant to toxicology found in them was compared by computer-assisted analysis. Some databases yielded very little information pertinent to toxicology, while others provided a considerable amount. In addition, the databases contained numerous duplicates (references common to more than one database). Most of the relevant documents could be obtained using only 8 of the 18 BDs selected. These databases are: Biosis Previews (BIOSIS), Chemical Abstracts (CA), Chemical Safety Newsbase (CSNB), Excerpta Medica (EMBASE), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Scisearch, Toxicology Information Online (TOXLINE) and the former Toxicology Literature (TOXLIT).