Since January 1986, author abstracts have been included for certain journals indexed in CINAHL. In 1995 CINAHL began writing original abstracts for some journal articles and all audiovisual and software records. A "[CINAHL Abstract]" indicator will follow any original abstract.

In records with a reference to another CINAHL record, the Accession Number to that record links to the cited reference. Only references to CINAHL documents are linked, and not all records include a reference and link.

The Publisher/Producer Address (AD) field contains an address for the producer.

The Abbreviated Source (AS) field contains an abbreviation of the journal name, as well as a display of all the basic information needed to locate a citation, including the Journal Abbreviation (JA), Volume (VO), Issue/Part (IP), Page (PG), and Year of Publication (YR).

The Author (AU) field contains personal author names. The format for authors is last name followed by one or more initials: Smith JC or Smith J.

Enter the last name, or if it is a common name, enter the last name and first initial. If you are unsure of the spelling of the last name (macdonald or mcdonald), enter one version and you will be able to scroll through the list of names to find the other. Use truncation to search for variations in initials, as in barrett c$.au.

The Bibliography (BY) field contains additional bibliographic references cited by the author. All are included. The bibliography field was added to selected publications in the CINAHL database in 2001. The Bibliography index contains all searchable words from the Bibliography.

Note: This field is currently not populated with data.

The CE Module Information (CE) field contains the title and URL for a specific CINAHL Continuing Education course. Modules provide Nursing and Allied Health professionals with a means to fulfill individual continuing education requirements.

The Commentary/Response (CM) field indicates whether a journal article commentary or a response to a commentary is available.

In records with a reference to another CINAHL record, the Accession Number to that record links to the cited reference. Only references to CINAHL documents are linked, and not all records include a reference and link.

The Document Delivery (DD) field contains information indicating where the full text of the document can be obtained. When available, this field will include a UMI Order Number. The UMI Order Number can be used to order the document from UMI (1-800-521-0600, x2786).

The Description (DF) field contains detailed information on the particular research instrument or other document type.

In records with a reference to another CINAHL record, the Accession Number to that record links to the cited reference. Only references to CINAHL documents are linked, and not all records include a reference and link.

The Article URL (DU) field contains journal article URLs that are maintained by CINAHL on their website

The Editor (ED) field contains personal editor names in the format of last name and one or more initials. This field is indexed under authors. Use truncation to search for variations in initials, as in amin n$.ed.

The Electronic Document ID Number (EI) field contains the electronic document ID number.

The Entry Week (EW) field contains a 6- or 8-digit date in which a document was added to the CINAHL database. Prior to 2001, the Entry Week field has a 6-digit date in the YYYYMM format. Beginning in 2001, the Entry Week field consists of an 8-digit date in the YYYYMMWW format.

The Revised Date (RD) also displays as part of the Entry Week (EW) field.

Subheadings are qualifiers added to CINAHL subject headings to refine their meaning. Qualifiers such as "surgery" or "therapy," when combined with a subject heading, give a very precise idea of what an article covers.

The Floating Subheading (FS) field contains the 2-letter codes, such as "su" for surgery. The spelled out subheadings for any subject heading can be viewed from the Subheadings tool.

The ISBN (IB) field contains the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for the book which is cited. It appears as a 10-13 digit string, in the format: 0-684-19395-7.

The Institution (IN) field has been included in CINAHL since 1992. This field includes the primary author's affiliation and address for journal articles and a producer address for software records.

Certain abbreviations have been standardized in the Institution field, including such terms as Hospital (HOSP), Medical and Medicine (MED), Administration (ADM), Nursing (NURS), Division (DIV), and Associate or Association (ASSOC).

The ISSN (IS) field contains the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) for the journal in which an article was published. It appears as an 8-digit string in the following format: 0028-4793.

The ISSN can be searched either with the hyphen, or with a space instead of the hyphen: 0028-4793 or 0028 4793.

The Instrumentation (IT) field includes the names of instruments used in research studies indexed by CINAHL. Names of clinical assessment tools also appear in this field, but instrument names do not include subscales, revised versions, edition numbers, etc.

To search for instrument names, enter the most unique word or phrase in the name.

The Journal Abbreviation (JA) field contains the abbreviated name of the journal in which the article was published. Enter enough letters of the journal name to locate the name in the index: new engl (for New England Journal of Medicine).

The Journal Name (JN) field contains the full name of the journal in which an article was published. Journal names are searched as phrases -- enter as many of the letters in a journal name as are needed to distinguish it from other journals: nursing ti (for nursing times).

The Journal Word (JW) field contains individual words from every journal name in CINAHL. This field is used to retrieve every occurrence of a journal which includes a particular word, such as "obstetrics."

The Language (LG) field contains the language of publication of an article. The language will appear in the index both as the full language name and a 3-letter code. The codes are usually, but not always, the first three letters of the language name, such as fre for French. Beginning in 1994, non-English materials began to be added to the CINAHL database.

The language index is quickly scrollable to determine all languages which appear in CINAHL.

The Literacy Level (LL) field indicates the readability level of consumer documents in full text.

The NLM Serial ID Number (NL) field contains the number assigned by the National Library of Medicine to identify the journal in which the document was published. This number, in conjunction with additional citation information, can be used to order the document from NLM's DOCLINE document delivery service.

The Original Study (OS) field contains references to the original studies cited by the author. All cited references are included. This field is formatted like Citations and may contain a CINAHL accession number, as well as author(s), title, and source information. This field was added to selected publications in the CINAHL database in 2001.

In records with a reference to another CINAHL record, the Accession Number to that record links to the cited reference. Only references to CINAHL documents are linked, and not all records include a reference and link.

The Price (PR) field contains price or ordering information, usually for audiovisual or software records.

The Publication Type (PT) field contains the type of publication being indexed, such as journal, book, audiovisual, pamphlet, software, dissertation, or research instrument. The field may also include the format of the individual item being indexed, such as editorial, research, or review, or the presence of some special data, such as exam questions, care plan, questionnaire.

Publication types are assigned by CINAHL indexers.

Some publication types unique to CINAHL include:

The Revised Date (RD) field contains a 6- or 8-digit date when the record was last revised. Revisions to records added to the database prior to 2001 will have a 6-digit date in YYYYMM format. Revisions to records added to the database beginning in 2001 will have an 8-digit date in YYYYMMWW format. The new format includes the week the record was revised in addition to the year and month. For example, a 1995 record revised in 2000 will have a 6-digit revision date; a 2001 record, once revised, would have an 8-digit revision date. When a Revised Date is available, it will display as part of the Entry Week (EW) field. Revised Date is also a limit.

In records with a reference to another CINAHL record, the Accession Number to that record links to the cited reference. Only references to CINAHL documents are linked, and not all records include a reference and link.

In records with a reference to another CINAHL record, the Accession Number to that record links to the cited reference. Only references to CINAHL documents are linked, and not all records include a reference and link.

CINAHL includes broad Journal Subset (SB) categories. Each category has a corresponding code to make searching convenient.

The CINAHL Subject Headings (SH) field contains subject headings used to index the literature contained in the database. Use subject headings to effectively search the database and retrieve literature citations on a specific topic.

CINAHL's subject headings were developed to reflect the terminology used by nursing and the allied health professionals, and follow the structure of the Medical Subject Headings, or MeSH, used by the National Library of Medicine.

The Source (SO) field includes a display of all the basic information needed to locate a citation, including the Journal Name (JN), Journal Word (JW), Edition (EN), Publisher (PB), Volume (VO), Issue/Part (IP), Page (PG), Publisher/Producer Address (AD), Date of Publication (DP), and Year of Publication (YR). The Source field also displays the Degree for Masters & Dissertations (DG), Division (DV), References (RB), Place of Publication (PL), School Name for Masters & Dissertations (SL), Miscellaneous Bibliographic Information (MI), and Supplement Title (SU).

The Special Interest (SP) field contains categories of literature for several specialties, which can help in finding the most recent literature for a specific area of concern.

The Series Title (ST) field contains the series title for books, pamphlets, and journals. The Series Title was added in 1995.

Stopwords such as "of" or "the" will display in documents but do not appear in the Title index. However, the word "a", which is a stopword in other fields CAN be searched in titles.

In order to provide comprehensive coverage of all nursing and allied health articles which contain information about topics such as new products, new drugs, or nursing practice issues, a new Table of Contents (TC) field has been added. Each Table of Contents entry contains the author(s), the title of the item, and pagination information. Entries will also include the CINAHL Accession Number if a full record for the item appears in CINAHL.

In records with a reference to another CINAHL record, the Accession Number to that record links to the cited reference. Only references to CINAHL documents are linked, and not all records include a reference and link.

The Title (TI) field contains the title of an article, book, proceeding, dissertation or software. Some titles include a title clarification which is added by an indexer if the original title does not adequately describe the contents of the item.

The Full Text (TX) field contains all searchable words from the text.

Beginning in 1994, the full text of some documents is available in CINAHL in the Full Text (TX) field. Initially, the Full Text field primarily contained the standards of nursing practice, nurse practice acts, research instruments, and some state nursing journals.

Many records contain "Full text available as PDF image file". Use the "Ovid Database PDF's" link to view the full-text article.

The Website (WB) field lists websites mentioned in the article. A brief description of the site may also be present, for example, "www.cancer.org American Cancer Society."
 
To search the Website field, enter the most descriptive part of the web address. For example, search on "fda" if the address you are searching for is http://www.fda.gov.