Bibliometric Analysis Of Evidence-based Literature On Infectious Diseases

Evidence-based Medicine (EBM) defined as "the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patient". One crucial step is efficiently finding the best evidence that answers clinical question. Finding the best evidence is the same meaning as finding the literature in evidence-based medicine in some extent.EBM offers the librarians opportunity to participate fully in the information process, including providing the efficiency information, critical appraisal of literature and so on. It is without doubt that these activities bring great challenge and responsibility for librarians.Applying bibliometric and statistic methods, these papers describe the literature of evidence-based medicine in infectious diseases. Discussing the dispersion of literature in journals, the distribution of author and the growth, obsolescence of literature. The study's goal is to provide qualitative and quantitative information to physician and other members of health care team, toinfluence the information seeking behavior of clinicians.The database used was PubMed/Medline. We collected 3173 original documents published 1998-2004. This document included 19 infectious diseases, and each of them contain four publication type randomized controlled trial (RCT), systematic review (SR), meta-analysis and clinical guideline, which are main format of evidence-base medicine.Applying Bradford's law of scattering to the list of journal, three zones and nine zones were created. It can be seen the number of journal in the three zones is in the proportion of 14:77:581, the number of journal on nine zone is in the proportion is 3:5:6:12:24:41:69:147:365, these proportion do not resemble Bradford's 1:n:n2.Using regression estimated the productivity of authors in infectious disease and viral hepatitis respectively. According to Lotka's law established mathematic model for infectious disease and viral hepatitis. It shows the model of infectious disease do not fit Lotka's law. As for the growth of number publication, the result shows nonfulfillment of Price's law, because production on EBM in infectious diseases does not grow exponentially, but grows linearity.Bibliometric studies are interesting tools for assessing the development of a specific discipline, during a given period. Despite their methodological limitations, these analyses permit us to examine the growth, size, and distribution of scientific literature...