How accurate is the neurosurgery literature? A review of references
Open accessAbstract
Background The reference list is an important part of academic manuscripts. The goal of this study is to evaluate the reference accuracy in the field of neurosurgery. Methods This study examines four major peer-reviewed neurosurgery journals, chosen based on their clinical impact factor: Neurosurgery, J Neurosurg, World Neurosurg, and Acta Neurochir. For each of the four journals, five articles from each of the journal's 12 issues published in 2019 were randomly selected using an online generator. This resulted in a total of 240 articles, 60 from each journal. Additionally, from each article's list of references, one reference was again randomly selected and checked for a citation or quotation error. The chi-square test was used to analyze the association between the occurrence of citation and quotation errors and the presence of hypothesized risk factors that could impact reference accuracy. Results 62.1% of articles had a minor citation error, 8.33% had a major citation error, 12.1% had a minor quotation error, and 5.8% of articles had a major quotation error. Overall, Acta Neurochir presented with the fewest quotation errors compared with the other journals evaluated. The only association between the frequency of errors and potential markers of reference mistakes was with the length of the bibliography. Surprisingly, this correlation indicated that the articles with longer reference lists had fewer citation errors (p < 0.01). Statistical significance was found between the occurrence of citation errors and the journals of publication (p < 0.01). Conclusions In order to advance medical treatment and patient care in neurosurgery, detailed documentation and attention to detail are necessary. The results from this analysis illustrate that improved reference accuracy is required.
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In Montenegro et al. (2020), 15.5% of verified references in three spine journals contained at least one error.
“Yes 15.5% Major: 4.5%.Minor: 11.0%”
From Reference accuracy of primary studies published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals: A scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as Montenegro et al. (2020)
The Abstract (Methods) says Montenegro et al. examined four neurosurgery journals, not three spine journals. The Abstract (Results) reports 62.1% of articles with a minor citation error and 8.33% with a major citation error, rather than 15.5% of references with an error (4.5% major and 11.0% minor). (LLM, conf=0.88)
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References 19 · Cited by 16
- Authors
- Montenegro, T. S., Hines, K., Gonzalez, G. A., Fatema, U., Partyka, P. P., Thalheimer, S., & Harrop, J.
- Affiliations
- Thomas Jefferson University (US)
- Rowan University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Montenegro, Thiago S.
- Venue
- Acta Neurochirurgica
- Published
- 2020-09-22
- Volume
- 163
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 13-18
- ISSN
- 0001-6268 (ISSN-L)
- 0942-0940
- OpenAlex
- W3088659328
- Cited by
- 16
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 4
- FWCI
- 11.14
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- jdc.jefferson.edu
- Locations
- Acta Neurochirurgica (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- The Medicine Forum (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Academic Writing and Publishing
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Keywords
- citation accuracy, citation errors, quotation errors, works cited, bibliographic errors, peer-reviewed journals, neurosurgery
- MeSH terms
- Neurosurgery, Periodicals as Topic, Medical Writing
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