MCMASTER+

About This Site


MCMASTER+ is a service of McMaster University's Health Information Research Unit. It incorporates the McMasterPLUSTM searchable database of best evidence from the health care literature of particular interest to physicians, nurses, and rehabilitation professionals.




What are the features of MCMASTER+?

The current features of MCMASTER+ include:

  • ratings of each eligible article for clinical relevance and newsworthiness by at least 3 practitioners for each discipline for which the article might be pertinent
  • a cumulative searchable database of articles that is continuously updated (from 2003 forward)
  • a search interface to access relevant information in the accumulating database
  • evidence-based search strategies for MEDLINE to supplement searches in the cumulated PLUS database when needed
  • download options for citation management
  • links to evidence-based resources



What do the clinical ratings in MCMASTER+ mean?

The current features of PLUS include:

  • systematic review of over 120 journals (including all Cochrane reviews relevant to physicians, nurses, and rehabilitation professionals) with selection of articles by expert research staff concerning the cause, course, diagnosis, prediction, prevention, and treatment of health problems, quality improvement and health economics, according to explicit criteria, with high reproducibility and periodic quality assurance checks*
  • ratings of each eligible article for clinical relevance and newsworthiness by at least 3 practitioners for each discipline for which the article might be pertinent

* Wilczynski NL, McKibbon KA, Haynes RB. Enhancing retrieval of best evidence for health care from bibliographic databases: calibration of the hand search of the literature. Medinfo. 2001;10(Pt 1):390-3.