Background: China has the largest population and number of patients in
the world. Chinese doctors can use these resources to conduct high quality
clinical trials. It is also very important for researchers and doctors of other
countries to get the information of diagnostic tests from China. Over
500,000 articles are published annually in more than 1000 biomedical
journals in China. However, most of them were published in Chinese
biomedical journals, which are little known by the world. Objectives:
Introducing Chinese biomedical databases to researchers and consumer in
other countries. Methods: We searched CBM, CNKI, VIP, WANGFAN,
MEDLINE, EMBASE and SCI in 2007, and collected and sorted medical
journals of them. Results: Less than 200 biomedical journals in China are
indexed by major online databases abroad, which account for 15% of all.
Reviewers researching MEDLINE and EMBASE would be missing a large
number of RCTs published in Chinese language. (see Tables 1 and 2)
Conclusions: Chinese biomedical databases should be used as a routine
source of studies in the preparation of systematic reviews. More
biomedical journals and research results in China should be indexed by
databases from abroad, rather than becaming a new kind of ‘grey
literature’.