Online medical literature consultation habits of academic teaching physicians in the EU and CIS countries: a cross-sectional study.

Background: Both in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and in the European Union (EU2004), ample availability of up to date medical scientific literature is important for progress in medical science and for the education of the next generation of healthcare workers. The aim of this research is to assess if the use of online medical literature among academic teaching (AT) physicians is at the same level in the CIS as in the EU2004.

Methodology/principal Findings: In the capital cities of the CIS and the EU2004 member states, AT physicians holding an academic position at least equivalent to an associate professor and performing the three classical tasks in academic medicine (teaching, research and patient care) were interviewed about their use of and familiarity with the Internet and 9 online literature services, including journals and bibliographical databases such as PubMed (Medline), The Cochrane Library and Web of Science.