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ClinicalKey

What is ClinicalKey?

ClinicalKey has been developed by Elsevier as a clinical insight engine to help answer clinical questions. The design supports an initial Google-like search and then gives you options to refine your results by choosing from a number of different facets, e.g. source, study type, date, specialty, etc.

You can also directly browse, search and access the large collections of resources that underpin ClinicalKey. These include:

  • Over 600 full text e-journals.
  • Over 1000 e-textbooks and reference manuals.
  • Over 17,000 medical and surgical and videos.
  • Over 2 million images that can be used for teaching and presentations.

To browse or search these (you need to be logged in), just click on Books, Journals or 'More' on the home page. The Trusted Content page provides more information about the different types of material, and the Master Content List shows what’s available at title level.

ClinicalKey also allows users, once they have completed a one-off registration, to save articles and book chapters of interest for their own personal use, and download them as PDFs to read later. To ensure that they remain compliant with copyright regulations and Elsevier’s licence conditions, users should download just the chapters for their immediate need, and are not more than 10% of any one publication. Please note that all usage is recorded and monitored.

Accessing ClinicalKey

Fellows, Members, postgraduate Affiliates and Associates can access ClinicalKey with their College Login details:

  1. Log in using your College login.
  2. Go to https://www.clinicalkey.com and select 'Login' from the top right.
  3. From the ClinicalKey login page, click on 'OpenAthens login'.

Please see our login help page for more information and illustrations.

E-journals on ClinicalKey

ClinicalKey is the platform for a wide range of full-text e-journals published by Elsevier. You will find that there is some overlap with RCS England Library-subscribed titles that have been made available via ScienceDirect, another Elsevier platform. RCS England members still have access to ScienceDirect, but all new Elsevier journal content dated from 2016 will only be available via ClinicalKey. Date coverage is as follows (this applies to the cover date of the issue in question):

  • ClinicalKey: 2007 onwards
  • ScienceDirect: 1995 (unless otherwise indicated) to 2015

You can use the Surgical Library to search for e-journals, and this will direct you to the appropriate platform to access full text.

Please be aware that copyright and licence terms apply, and that articles may be saved/downloaded/printed for personal use only.

Help and support

If you have any questions or comments about ClinicalKey, please contact us at library.athens@rcseng.ac.uk or call our Enquiry desk on +44 (0) 20 7869 6556.

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