Frequently Asked Questions

Search across titles, abstracts, AI summaries, authors, tags, and countries to find relevant armed forces and veterans health research.

PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) is a framework to help structure clinical questions. Here's an example of how to search using PICO:

For systematic reviews or comprehensive evidence searches, you can build a multi-concept boolean query using AND, OR, NOT, parentheses, and quoted phrases. Here is a worked example.

Tip: ForcesAtlas searches your query against our curated database of armed forces health research. All articles have already been assessed for relevance, so you don't need to add military-specific filters the way you would in PubMed or other general databases.

Search speed depends on several factors, including the complexity of your query and the size of the result set. Searches involving multiple boolean operators, broad keywords, or large date ranges may take a few extra seconds as the database works through thousands of matching records.

Large systematic-review strategies run as resumable, indexed search jobs. Top-level AND and OR combinations of synonym groups are evaluated with article-ID intersections and unions while preserving parentheses. The results page displays how many articles have been checked and how many matches have been found while bounded batches are committed. The whole search is therefore not tied to one browser or proxy timeout, and results remain paginated regardless of how many articles match. Unfielded review concepts search titles, abstracts, AI summaries, and subject tags; use author: or country: when those metadata fields are explicit review criteria.

To make a broad strategy more focused, try:

• Narrowing your query with more specific keywords or additional boolean terms
• Using the advanced search filters (e.g. date range, publication type) to reduce the result set
• Leaving the results page open while the displayed batch progress completes

Our repository covers Armed Forces Community health and wellbeing alongside operational military medicine:

• Mental Health (PTSD, depression, anxiety, moral injury)
• Traumatic Brain Injury and neurological conditions
• Physical injuries, rehabilitation, and prosthetics
• Substance abuse and addiction treatment
• Sleep disorders and fatigue management
• Transition to civilian healthcare
• Women veterans' health and gender-specific issues
• Environmental exposures and occupational health
• Family support and deployment stress
• Suicide prevention and intervention
• Military readiness and performance optimisation
• Telemedicine and healthcare innovation
• Deployed clinical practice, combat casualty care, and war wounds
• Casualty evacuation and prehospital care in military or conflict settings
• Military medical services, training, simulation, and readiness
• Laboratory research, equipment, and technology developed for operational military medicine

ForcesAtlas indexes a wide range of research outputs relevant to Armed Forces Community health or operational military medicine. Every article is classified by publication type so you can filter search results to the formats most useful for your work. The types we currently index include:

Primary research

• Journal articles: Peer-reviewed original research published in academic journals. This is the most common type in the database.
• Conference papers: Research presented at academic or professional conferences, including proceedings, abstracts, and poster presentations.
• Theses: Doctoral dissertations and master's theses containing original research on armed forces health topics.
• Case studies: Detailed examinations of individual cases or small groups, often used in clinical and organisational research.
• Preprints: Early-stage research shared before formal peer review, typically hosted on preprint servers such as medRxiv or PsyArXiv.
• Laboratory, simulation, and equipment studies: Research that directly supports operational military medicine, combat or conflict casualty care, or military medical readiness, even when it does not involve a human military sample.

Evidence synthesis

• Systematic reviews: Structured reviews that follow a defined methodology to identify and appraise all relevant evidence on a specific research question.
• Meta-analyses: Statistical analyses that combine the results of multiple studies to draw broader conclusions.
• Reviews: Narrative or scoping reviews that summarise the existing literature on a topic without the strict protocol of a systematic review.

Policy, reports & guidance

• Technical reports: Detailed reports produced by research organisations, government bodies, or defence institutions.
• White papers: Authoritative documents that present positions, findings, or policy recommendations on specific issues.
• Policy briefs: Concise summaries designed to inform policymakers about research findings and their implications.
• Working papers: Preliminary research documents circulated for discussion and feedback, often produced by think tanks or research centres.
• Protocols: Published study protocols that describe the planned methodology for upcoming research, including clinical trial registrations.
• Clinical guidance and consensus statements: Recommendations for military, deployed, combat casualty, or conflict-wound care developed from evidence and expert agreement.
• Grey literature: Research outputs produced outside traditional academic publishing, such as government reports, charity publications, and institutional documents.

Commentary & scholarly communication

• Editorials: Opinion pieces or commentaries written by journal editors or invited experts on topics of current relevance.
• Commentaries: Short scholarly articles offering expert perspective, critique, or context on published research or emerging issues.
• Letters: Correspondence published in journals, including letters to the editor, research letters, and brief communications.

Books & chapters

• Books: Academic monographs or edited volumes focused on armed forces health topics.
• Book chapters: Individual chapters from edited books that address specific aspects of armed forces research.

You can filter by publication type using the advanced search filters on the search results page. If you come across a publication type that you think we should be indexing but isn't listed above, please let us know.

While we use AI processing combined with manual human review, occasionally an article may slip through that isn't directly relevant to Armed Forces Community health or operational military medicine. If you spot one, you can easily flag it for review:

1. Open the article by clicking on its title from the search results or homepage
2. On the article detail page, click the Flag Article button
3. Provide a brief reason for flagging (e.g. "not relevant to armed forces" or "duplicate article")
4. Click Submit Flag

The article will remain visible while our team reviews it. Flagged articles are checked promptly and removed or corrected if necessary. Your feedback helps us maintain the quality and relevance of the database. Thank you!

Each article is assessed using a combination of Generative AI and manual human review. We primarily rely on the article's title and abstract to determine whether it satisfies one of two relevance routes. The abstract is especially important because it provides the detail needed to understand the work's population, purpose, methods, and findings.

1. Armed Forces Community population health: The article explicitly identifies serving personnel, reservists, veterans, or Armed Forces family members and directly addresses their health, wellbeing, healthcare, rehabilitation, or functioning.
2. Operational military medicine: The article has an explicit and central focus on military or deployed medicine, combat or conflict casualty care, war wounds, military medical services or training and readiness, or medical equipment intended for those settings. Guidance, reviews, simulations, laboratory research, and equipment studies can qualify without a human military sample.

A military author affiliation, institution, journal, funding source, facility, keyword, or passing mention is not enough by itself. Generic civilian trauma, disaster, infection, or healthcare research is not included merely because it could be transferable to military settings.

However, making this judgement can be challenging when:

• No abstract is available: Some articles are published without an abstract, which makes it difficult to assess their relevance based on the title alone.
• The article is not open access: When full-text content is behind a paywall, licensing restrictions prevent us from accessing the article to make a thorough assessment. In these cases, we must rely solely on the available metadata (title, keywords, and any partial information provided by the publisher).

Where information is limited, we take a cautious approach and may still include an article if the available metadata suggests it could be relevant. If you believe an article has been incorrectly included or excluded, please let us know or use the flag feature on the article page.

ForcesAtlas is built using Generative AI combined with manual human review:

• Identification: We systematically monitor global research databases to identify publications relevant to Armed Forces Community health and operational military medicine
• AI Processing: Generative AI automatically categorises research by theme, generates summaries, and identifies key topics to help you discover related work
• Human Review: All AI-generated content is validated by human experts to ensure accuracy and relevance
• Weekly Updates: The database is updated weekly with newly identified and curated articles
• Search & Export: Our search supports boolean operators and advanced filters, and all results can be exported in RIS, BibTeX, or CSV format

ForcesAtlas draws on multiple trusted information sources and databases to ensure broad and up-to-date coverage:

Article discovery sources

• PubMed: The leading biomedical literature database maintained by the US National Library of Medicine, covering millions of peer-reviewed life sciences and health research publications
• Europe PMC: A Europe-wide open-access repository of life sciences literature, providing broad international coverage beyond North American sources
• OpenAlex: A large open catalogue of global research outputs spanning journals, conference papers, books, and other scholarly works across all disciplines
• Semantic Scholar: An AI-powered research tool that provides access to over 200 million academic papers across all fields of science, offering rich metadata and citation context
• Manual human search: Our team also conducts targeted manual searches to capture relevant publications not yet indexed by automated feeds, ensuring nothing important is missed

Metadata and access enrichment sources

• Crossref: DOI-based publication metadata, including journal, publisher, citation, issue, volume, page, and author metadata when available
• ORCID: Author identifiers and profile information used to improve author records and disambiguation
• Unpaywall: Open-access availability checks and PDF links for articles with DOIs

This multi-source approach ensures that ForcesAtlas provides comprehensive, current coverage of armed forces health research from around the world while keeping source identifiers and links back to original records wherever possible.

Some articles on ForcesAtlas include an Our Summary section marked with an AI-Generated badge. This summary is produced automatically using a large language model (LLM), specifically the OpenAI API, and is designed to give you a quick, plain-language overview of the article's content, key takeaway messages, and practical implications for the Armed Forces Community.

What it includes:

• Summary: A concise overview of the article's aims, methods, and findings, written in accessible language
• Key Takeaway Messages: The most important points distilled from the research
• So What? A brief note on the practical relevance or implications of the findings for practitioners, policymakers, or service members

Important caveats:

• AI-generated summaries are produced from the article's abstract and metadata, so they may not capture every nuance of the full paper
• Summaries are reviewed by our team but may occasionally contain errors or simplifications
• Always refer to the original article for accurate, complete information before using findings in clinical practice, policy, or research

Not all articles have an AI-generated summary. Coverage depends on whether sufficient metadata was available at the time of processing.

If you use ForcesAtlas in your research or publications, please cite it as:

ForcesAtlas (2025). ForcesAtlas: A searchable database of armed forces health research. Available at: https://forcesatlas.com [Accessed: date].

Replace date with the date you accessed the database.

ForcesAtlas is designed to support evidence synthesis, evidence curation, and systematic reviews. You can:

• Search comprehensively: Use boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and advanced filters to build precise search queries
• Filter by date, type, and theme: Narrow results to specific time periods, article types, or research themes
• Export citations: Download search results in RIS, BibTeX, or CSV format for use in citation managers and review tools
• Track research trends: Use the analytics and trends pages to understand the landscape of armed forces health research
• Identify key authors: Explore leading researchers in specific topic areas

Article titles, abstracts, and bibliographic metadata displayed on ForcesAtlas are sourced from publicly available research databases and remain the intellectual property of their respective authors, publishers, and rights holders. ForcesAtlas does not claim ownership of third-party content.

AI-generated summaries and the ForcesAtlas database structure are © 2025–2026 ForcesAtlas.