To make updated and unbiased answers to a clinical question, it is essential to effectively and efficiently search the medical literature. The goal of medical literature searching is comprehensive and transparent and is a replicable procedure to get correct conclusions to the question. To do this, each user should make well formulated clinical questions, and have knowledge on what specific characteristics each database has. There are several readily accessible English databases that provide literature information including PubMed, EMBASE, and CINAHL. The Korean medical literature database including Koreamed and KMBase are also available. Users can search information through formulated search terms such as in MeSH in Pubmed. Skills in finding and using search terms are essential in effective searching. Also knowledge on using filters is frequently needed to search database quickly for articles on several study designs. After running a search in the database, one needs to retrieve search results effectively. In comprehensive literature search, especially for writing a systematic review, one needs to include literature to overcome and minimize publication bias. This process often requires searching in gray literature, and the common types and sources of publication bias are described. Finally, we need to constantly validate search results, and revise the search through a continuous process. In this article, the basic concepts and procedures of searching medical literature are described.
Literature Based Discovery ; Publication Bias ; Running ; Writing

BACKGROUND: Journal editors have exercised their control over submitted papers having a high similarity index. Despite widespread suspicion of possible plagiarism on a high similarity index, our study focused on the real effect of the similarity index on the value of a scientific paper. METHODS: This research examined the percent values of the similarity index from 978 submitted (420 published) papers in the Korean Journal of Anesthesiology since 2012. Thus, this study aimed to identify the correlation between the similarity index and the value of a paper. The value of a paper was evaluated in two distinct phases (during a peer-review process vs. after publication), and the value of a published paper was evaluated in two aspects (academic citation vs. social media appearance). RESULTS: Yearly mean values of the similarity index ranged from 16% to 19%. There were 254 papers cited at least once and 179 papers appearing at least once in social media. The similarity index affected the acceptance/rejection of a paper in various ways; although the influence was not linear and the cutoff measures were distinctive among the types of papers, both extremes were related to a high rate of rejection. After publication, the similarity index had no effect on academic citation or social media appearance according to the paper. CONCLUSIONS: The finding suggested that the similarity index no longer had an influence on academic citation or social media appearance according to the paper after publication, while the similarity index affected the acceptance/rejection of a submitted paper. Proofreading and intervention for finalizing the draft by the editors might play a role in achieving uniform quality of the publication.
Anesthesiology ; Bibliometrics ; Literature Based Discovery ; Peer Review ; Plagiarism ; Publications ; Social Media

OBJECTIVETo quantitatively assess the association between transfusions and the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in neonates.

METHODBoth Chinese and English literature published from Jan. 1985 to Nov. 2011 about the case-control study of the association between transfusions and neonatal NEC were retrieved by searching the electronic resource databases. A meta-analysis was then performed on the comparison and synthesis of findings from included studies. Pooled odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated using RevMan 5.0 software. Sensitivity analysis was conducted and possible publication bias was tested as well.

RESULTA total of 7 case-control studies (480 blood transfusion cases, 2845 control cases) were included. The meta-analysis with a random-effects model found a pooled OR of 3.35 (95% CI: 1.54-7.27). Sensitivity analysis showed that OR for post-transfusion NEC within 48 h was 4.21 (95% CI: 2.17-8.16). The OR was 4.29 (95% CI: 1.39-13.24) after factors such as gestational age and birth weight were de-confounded. The fail-safe number was 263.

CONCLUSIONBlood transfusion can increase the risk of NEC in neonates. The clinical application of this conclusion should be cautious due to limited reports. High-quality randomized control trials are still needed for the further proof of the association between blood transfusion and neonatal NEC.

Bias ; Case-Control Studies ; Enterocolitis, Necrotizing ; epidemiology ; etiology ; Female ; Humans ; Infant, Newborn ; Infant, Newborn, Diseases ; epidemiology ; etiology ; therapy ; Infant, Premature ; Literature Based Discovery ; Male ; Odds Ratio ; Risk Factors ; Transfusion Reaction