Background: The Cochrane Library is the preeminent online database of systematic reviews. Since 2007 the National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) started to translate the abstracts of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews into Chinese (CDSR). The abstracts are summarized in the Chinese Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CCDSR), available at http://clc.nhri.org.tw/admin/clcmain1.aspx since 2008. Objectives: This study is to investigate the behavior in the usage of Chinese abstracts in CDSR. Methods: Data of online logs were obtained from August 2008 to December 2010. Results: A total of 3,549 abstracts, classified into 53 categories, are available. During 2008 and 2009, there was an increasing usage of the CCDSR month by month. And there was also an increasing usage of the CCDSR year by year. The average usage rates per month are 325 hits in 2008, 636 hits in 2009, and 6290 hits in 2010. Overall, the most commonly accessed category was kidney, followed by pregnancy and delivery, newborn, and respiratory tract. The most commonly accessed month was April, followed by October. Conclusions: The Chinese abstracts in CCDSR provided by NHRI are helpful for users who prefer to read Chinese. Further dissemination is better for the other users who can only read Chinese, such as patients and the public.
