Originally Published MX January/February 2004

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

With hundreds of journals to choose from and little more than four or five hours a week to devote to reviewing the scientific literature, busy clinicians and researchers face a big challenge in keeping up.

Fortunately, it seems that trying to read everything published on a favorite topic is not only a logistical nightmare, but also a counterproductive information overload to be avoided. Exhaustive literature searches often capture articles that present poorly supported, confusing, and potentially biased information. These sources are known as gray literature. Medical professionals need a strategy for identifying core information sources.

One method that works involves a trade-off among considerations of time consumption, cost, and quality of publication assessment.