Accuracy of references in five leading medical journals
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It is well established that reference inaccuracies are highly prevalent in the peer-reviewed literature, ranging from 4% to 48% of citations.
“It is well established that reference inaccuracies are highly prevalent in the peer-reviewed literature, ranging from 4% to 48% of citations [8-11].”
From High Rates of Fabricated and Inaccurate References in ChatGPT-Generated Medical Content (2023) · cites this paper as [11]
In “Accuracy of references in five leading medical journals” (page not provided), the authors report reference error rates from 4.1% to 40.3% across five journals and describe errors as prevalent in specialist biomedical journals. This supports the prevalence claim and the approximate 4% lower bound, but this source does not report a 48% upper bound. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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Flagged first, then by citations
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Cited by
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High Rates of Fabricated and Inaccurate References in ChatGPT-Generated Medical Content
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“It is well established that reference inaccuracies are highly prevalent in the peer-reviewed literature, ranging from 4% to 48% of citations [8-11].”
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“Adapting the methodology of previous studies, 9,21–23, 25 we included We defined a reference to a publication as incorrect if one or more errors were identified in any of the following six elements: journal, authors, title, year, volume, and page numbers.”
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“1% for the New England Journal of Medicine (Siebers and Holt, 2000) was used for the citation error rate.”
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“It is therefore surprising that the quality of the referencing is unsatisfactory, even in leading medical journals (de Lacy et al., 1985; Siebers and Holt, 2000).”
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“Siebers and Holt (2000) examined five leading medical journals and found reference error rates ranging from 4.1% to 40.3%.”
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“The overall error rate is one of the lowest reported, and is similar to a study published in a general medicine journal where the authors evaluated five leading journals, finding a mean value of 26.5% and a range of 4.1–40.3%.”
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Accessibility and Accuracy of Web Page References in 5 Major Medical Journals
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“…of citation accuracy in scientific journals emphasise the responsibility of the author to cite and reference accurately (e.g. Eichorn & Yankauer, 1987; Pritchard, 2013; Siebers & Holt, 2000), and in a case of detected plagiarism in an article the publisher, the journal, would retract the article.”
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JAT's Impact Factor—Room for Improvement?
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“Previous studies on the quality of published articles have focused on quotation and reference accuracy (6, 7).”
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Normalization of Deviation: Quotation Error in Human Factors
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“Martinson, 2000; Siebers & Holt, 2000; Waytowich, Onwuegbuzie, & Jiao, 2006; Wilks & Spivey, 2008).”
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Citation Inaccuracy in a Scientific Journal
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“Citation inaccuracy is not limited to a specific scientific discipline and a variety of studies clearly document that the matter has been an issue of long-standing concern for authors (Kristof 1997; Siebers and Holt 2000), librarians (Geer 1995), and journal editors (Biancuzzo 1997) alike.”
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Accuracy of References in Different Speciality Medical Journals of Nepal
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“…Resource & Research Center, University of Guam zinjman@uog.edu In the literature on reference accuracy in science and medicine (e.g. see Poyer 1979; Siebers and Holt 2000; Ravendran 2003), attention is virtually restricted to bibliographic errors regarding names and initials of authors, title of…”
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Accuracy of references in theses
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The Accuracy of References in The Journal of Urology ®
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Errata and Corrigenda in Neurosurgical Publications: An In-Depth Analysis and Inference
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Syphilis - eine szientometrische Analyse
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As Well as Proper Citation, References in Biomedical Articles Should Be Accurate
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“inaccuracies in leading medical journals (2).”
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Citation and quotation accuracy in three anesthesia journals: a cross-sectional survey
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- Authors
- Siebers, R., & Holt, S.
- Affiliations
- Victoria University of Wellington (NZ)
- Corresponding author
- Siebers, Robert
- ORCID
- Siebers, Robert
- Venue
- The Lancet
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2000-10
- Volume
- 356
- Issue
- 9239
- Pages
- 1445
- ISSN
- 0099-5355 (ISSN-L)
- 0140-6736
- OpenAlex
- W2067689661
- Semantic Scholar
- 69af22772d1795d282c4c4a6487e825a153c80ac
- Cited by
- 71
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 35.23
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- The Lancet (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DigitalGeorgetown (Georgetown University Library) (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 errors, citation accuracy, medical journal articles, bibliographic references
- MeSH terms
- Periodicals as Topic, Quality Control
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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