Subject Guides: Grey literature: Conference Abstracts & Proceedings

Conferences

Conference websites can be rich sources of information including published proceedings and abstracts. Check that the conferences are legitimate and not predatory or questionable conference.

For more information on checking if a conference is legitimate go to Thinkcheckattend.

Over one-half of trials reported in conference abstracts never reach full publication (Diezel et al 1999, Scherer et al 2018) and those that are eventually published in full have been shown to have results that are systematically different from those that are never published in full (Scherer et al 2018)... It is, therefore, important to try to identify possibly relevant studies reported in conference abstracts...'

Ch. 4, 1.3.3 Conference abstracts and proceedings - Cochrane Handbook Lefebvre C, Glanville J, Briscoe S, Featherstone R, Littlewood A, Metzendorf M-I, Noel-Storr A, Paynter R, Rader T, Thomas J, Wieland LS. Technical Supplement to Chapter 4: Searching for and selecting studies. In: Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA (editors). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions Version 6.4 (updated February 2024). Cochrane, 2024. Available from www.training.cochrane.org/handbook
Conference Monkey
A website with a list of conferences around the world and links to the conference site.

Databases

NSLHD Libraries subscribe to the following databases which index conference proceedings:

APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
A database with a focus on mental health. It includes references to psychological, social, behavioural, and health sciences literature.
BioMed Central Meeting Abstracts This link opens in a new window
This is an archive of abstract collections originally published in BioMed Central’s Meeting Abstracts Service between 2001 and 2004. Published as individual supplements to BMC Meeting Abstracts, all collections are fully searchable.
CINAHL This link opens in a new window
Nursing and Allied Health literature including Social Work, Physiotherapy, Psychology, Podiatry, Speech Pathology, Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy.
Embase This link opens in a new window
A major biomedical and pharmaceutical database. It includes all Medline content, and is a good source of information for pharmacology, rehabilitation, medicine, mental health and other areas.
NLM Meeting Abstracts This link opens in a new window
National Library of Medicine Meeting Abstracts database contains selected abstracts from meetings and conferences in the subject areas of AIDS, Health Services Research, and Space Life Sciences, published between 1990 – 2010. The abstracts are organized into three collections, each available in XML file format. This dataset is no-longer updated.
Trip Database This link opens in a new window
Trip is a clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care.