Background: The topic of shared decision making has been studied for over years, and its importance has been increasingly recognized. Objective: To investigate the publication of shared decision making in health care setting in literature including their coverage of classification, year of publication, country of origin and disease distribution. Methods: Three databases including MEDLINE, EMBASE, and CBM were searched from 1996 to 2009. The search terms were shared decision making , shared determinant , patient value preference in decision making and patient and doctors communication . Two reviewers initially worked independently including selecting, identification and evaluation the available data. Results: There were 903 articles published from 1996 to 2009. Data were collected and represented for the following aspects. 1) Most articles mainly discussed or providing the general descriptions of shared decision making and ways of how to promote this new model. 2) The number of articles for shared decision making increased over the past years, especially after 2000. The number of articles published from 2006 to 2009 increased by 677% (433/64) compared with the number from 1996 to 1999. 3) Among the total of 903 articles, only 13 (1%) were from developing countries. 4) Diseases coverage mostly were cancer (34%), psychological and neuropathy disease (17%) and cardiovascular disease (10%) respectively. Conclusions: More researches are needed to examine the influences, limits, and possible dangers of shared decision making if there is any. Developing countries should carry out more researches on shared decision making. More research should be conducted on other specialist areas especially chronic diseases.