In focus. Life after BioethicsLine: a reply to Joyce Plaza

The recent closure and removal of BioethicsLine led many researchers to wonder where to turn for their research needs. Joyce Plaza wrote that the closure is a mistake. In this essay I maintain, contra Plaza, that due to its cross-disciplinary nature researchers can find bioethics literature in other databases. In developing the search strategy the researcher needs to consider what the problem is about. If the researcher has a philosophical approach in mind, a wise choice would be to use Philosopher's Index; a legal approach suggests using Academic Universe, Westlaw, Lexis or legal databases freely available through state and federal websites. Further, in so far as the National Library of Medicine is integrating citations in BioethicsLine into the NLM Gateway databases (PubMed and LOCATORplus) I point out suggestions on using the latter databases effectively. There is a wealth of information readily available and researchers have much to learn by trying the alternatives.