26 Advisor Reviews / The Charleston Advisor / October 2020 www.charlestonco.com
ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
CINAHL Complete doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.26
Date of Review: August 14, 2020
Composite Score: HHH 7/8 Reviewed by: Dawn Behrend Lenoir-Rhyne University, Hickory, North Carolina
Abstract The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) Complete is subscription aggregate health and allied health sciences database own exclusively by EBSCO and available via the EBSCOhost platform. CINAHL Complete is the premier product in the lineup of five tiered versions including CINAHL, CINAHL Plus, CINAHL with Full Text, and CINAHL Plus with Full Text. The product has a wide audience of users including students, instructors, researchers, and practitioners. This robust collection indexes over 5,600 journals beginning in 1937, with 1,200 journals being offered with full-text and the large majority with no embargo. CINAHL Complete is valued for its substantial indexing of publications core to the nursing field, use of MeSH subject headings, and numerous options for advanced searching unique to the health sciences. Value-added features include accredited continuing education modules, evidence-based care sheets, and quick lessons. While the database is not an e-book aggregator, it includes a relatively small collection of e-books with most titles being rather outdated. A potential drawback for those considering the addition of CINAHL Complete to their library is the lack of sharing of metadata between EBSCO and other commercial vendors which may complicate the reliability of linking to records for those libraries using a discovery service other than EBSCO Discovery Service. While much less sizeable in its holdings, ProQuest’s Nursing & Allied Health Source may be another possibility, particularly for those seeking a database for use with an academic population. EBSCO’s MEDLINE Complete may also be an option, particularly for those seeking historical publications in addition to current research.
Pricing Options Access is by annual subscription. Pricing for academic institutions is based on a variety of factors including but not limited to FTE, existing EBSCO databases, consortium agreements and/or buying groups. Libraries should contact EBSCO for a customized quote.1
Product Overview/Description The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) is a well-known and highly respected subscription aggregate database serving the research needs of nurses and allied health professionals, health sciences students and instructors, and clinical researchers that will be of value to any academic library supporting health sciences programs and essential to medical libraries supporting professionals in the healthcare field. With its origins in 1961 as the print index, Cumulative Index to Nursing Literature, CINAHL has been owned by EBSCO Industries since 2003, and offered exclusively on the EBSCOhost platform since 2006. There are currently five tiered versions available: CINAHL; CINAHL Plus; CINAHL with Full Text; CINAHL Plus with Full Text; and CINAHL Complete.
<dawn.behrend@lr.edu>
Described as “the definitive research tool for nursing and allied health professionals,” CINAHL Complete indexes a vast assortment of publications.2 The most recent coverage list indicates holdings of 5,649 journals with more than 1,200 of these being full-text and with indexing dating back to 1937. The database offers searchable cited references for over 1,500 of its titles beginning in 1985. In analyzing the coverage list, the majority of holdings are academic journals at 73% of the total collection, followed by magazines which comprise 24% of the collection. Most titles are identified as core, at 88% of the holdings, with the remainder being denoted as priority. While not present in substantial numbers, CINAHL Complete does include trade publications, reports, books, newspapers, and other publication types. Book publication dates range from 2007 to 2017 with less than 20% having been published in the last 5 years. The selection of dissertations is considerable at over 25,000 items. The collection is diverse in its inclusion of publications from 66 counties, with the top two countries represented being the United States (44%) and the United Kingdom (29%). Full-text for most publications is immediately available with 96% of titles having no embargo. Those publications with an embargo range from 1 to 18 months. The collection contains over six million records covering 50 nursing specialties as well as such popular health science disciplines as speech and language pathology, nutrition, and general health and medicine. In addition to research publications, CINAHL Complete includes such value-added features as 170 continuing education modules accredited by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Accreditation Program and the International Association for Continuing Education and Training, 133 evidence-based care sheets, and 169 quick lessons which provide overviews of diseases and conditions. It should be noted that these features are also available in CINAHL Plus and CINAHL Plus with Full Text. EBSCO offers a number of “point of care” standalone products designed to assist medical and allied health professionals in making patient care decisions, such as DynaMed and Nursing Reference Center, which are compatible with CINAHL Complete. CINAHL Complete is fully compatible with EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), and is purportedly compatible with other commercial discovery services, such as ProQuest’s Summon. However, the lack of sharing of metadata by EBSCO with non-EBSCO vendors and vice versa results in differences in metadata and record formats across vendors and platforms which can cause difficulties with OpenURL linking. Thus, libraries using discovery services other than EDS should keep in mind that linking to content in CINAHL Complete may be somewhat unreliable and that searching the database individually will often be more effective. MARC records are available and comply with MARC21 standards. Usage statistics can be monitored by administrators through COUNTER-compliant reports. Additional administrative features include custom branding, ability to configure search results and display preferences, language settings, and creating and managing local collections.
