Searching Embase: Field Tags and Filters for Narrowing Searches

You can use field labels in Embase to limit your search to only the specified fields of the citations. For instance, you can add a Title field label and only search for a word or words in article titles. Without field labels, Embase defaults to  broad search for your keywords anywhere in the citation, abstract, or subject headings. To run a more narrow or focused search, click on the Fields option in the Advanced Search menu bar to view all field labels. You can either copy/paste the wanted label(s) to add into your search or else add the search term to which you want to apply the label to the search box and then go to the Fields menu and click on the wanted label. 

If your search seems to have too many irrelevant results, using field labels can help narrow your search. To use field labels, add a colon and the code immediately following the search term. For instance, to only search for dogs in the titles of articles, you'd search for dogs:ti in Embase.

A list of common field labels is below: 

Use the filter options available in the left sidebar of the search results page to narrow and focus your search.

Embase offers many Results Filters you can use to focus your search results to the most useful or important citations. To add one or more filters, click on the category, select the filter option(s) you want, then click apply. 

Sources: This filter shows you which results are in MEDLINE (also in PubMed via NLM) and which are unique to Embase. 

Drugs: This filter lets you limit by drug aspects and options. For instance, with the Naproxen search, the drug filter options include limiting to only studies with placebo and limiting to studies that include a specific comparison intervention (e.g. ibuprofen or paracetamol).

Diseases: This filter lets you limit the search by a specific disease or condition, which might be the condition your intervention of interest is treating or an adverse affect or outcome. 

Devices: This filter limits the search to only studies that include a specific medical device. 

Floating Subheadings: This filter narrows a search that includes a subject heading to only search one or more aspects of that subject heading, such as only Adverse Drug Reactions with Naproxen. 

Age and Gender: These filters both let you specify aspects of studies' populations in your search results and limit to, for example, only studies looking at children or women.  

Study Types: This filter limits your search results by type of research study methodology. 

Publication Types: This filter limits your search by type of publication, such as article or conference paper. 

Authors: This filter shows the authors with the most publications in your search and lets you filter by one or more of them. 

Conference Abstracts: This filter lists the conference names associated with the most publications in your search and lets you filter by one or more of them.

Drug Trade Names & Drug Manufacturers: These filters limit your search by a specific drug name or company. 

Device Trade Names & Device Manufacturers: Similarly, these filters limit your search by a specific medical device name or company.