Writing strategies for improving the access of medical literature

When conducting a literature review,medical authors typically search for relevant keywords in bibliographic databases or on search engines like Google.After selecting the most pertinent article based on the title’s relevance and the abstract’s content,they download or purchase the article and cite it in their manuscript.Three major elements influence whether an article will be cited in future manuscripts:the keywords,the title,and the abstract.This indicates that these elements are the“key dissemination tools”for research papers.If these three elements are not determined judiciously by authors,it may adversely affect the manuscript’s retrievability,readability,and citation index,which can negatively impact both the author and the journal.In this article,we share our informed perspective on writing strategies to enhance the searchability and citation of medical articles.These strategies are adopted from the principles of search engine optimization,but they do not aim to cheat or manipulate the search engine.Instead,they adopt a reader-centric content writing methodology that targets well-researched keywords to the readers who are searching for them.Reputable journals,such as Nature and the British Medical Journal,emphasize“online searchability”in their author guidelines.We hope that this article will encourage medical authors to approach manuscript drafting from the perspective of“looking inside-out.”In other words,they should not only draft manuscripts around what they want to convey to fellow researchers but also integrate what the readers want to discover.It is a call-to-action to better understand and engage search engine algorithms,so they yield information in a desired and self-learning manner because the“Cloud”is the new stakeholder.

Classification of interventions in Traditional Chinese Medicine

OBJECTIVE: To describe the key systems used for Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) classification.METHODS: The TCM classifications used in the International Classification of Diseases-9 Clinical Modification(ICD-9-CM) volume 3, the ICD-10 Procedure Coding System, the International Classification of Health Interventions, and the Medical Subject Headings(Me SH) and Chinese Traditional Medicine and Materia Medica Subject Headings(TCMe SH) thesauruses were compared regarding descriptive terms, structure, and features of TCM interventions.RESULTS: The National Library of Medicine's Me SH thesaurus is ubiquitous. The ICD-9-CM(volume 3),ICD-10 Procedure Coding System, and International Classification of Health Interventions cover insufficient concepts of TCM, and cannot be used directly as classification systems for TCM interventions. In contrast, the TCM contents of the TCMe SH thesaurus are complete, systematic, and detailed, and its hierarchical structure can be used for effective TCM classification.CONCLUSION: TCM classification is very limited and flawed. The Me SH thesaurus helps decrease the detrimental effect of the language barrier. Similarly, the TCMe SH thesaurus can help those without full command of the Mandarin language to access Chinese literature, but the value of searches using TCMe SH could be improved by collaborative working with Information Specialists who are fluent in Mandarin and understand TCM.