Objective: One important aim of Chinese Cochrane Centre is to establish Chinese clinical studies database with two methods: one is hand searching, another is electronic searching. We compared with the two methods to obtain the baseline data for complete Chinese database.

Methods: We selected two journals which are Chinese Journal of Infectious Diseases & Chinese Journal of Integrated Traditional and Western Medicine. According to the criteria for registering studies with the Cochrane Collabration's and identified them with hand searching and electronic searching individually. And the electronic searching words contained of treatment, effect of drug, controlled studies and blinded etc.

Results: The number of trial reports gradually increased year by year, especially in Chinese Journal of Integrated Traditional and Western Medicine. The number of reports both identified either with hand searching or electronic searching gradually increased. And the portion of average increased is more than 60% in Chinese Journal of Infectious Diseases over than the other journal.

Conclusion: The two methods both have advantage each other for Chinese database. Electronic searching can improve the efficiency before included in Chinese database for those journals, which indexed in electronic searching.