A survey of reference accuracy in two Asian dermatologic journals (the Journal of Dermatology and the Korean Journal of Dermatology)
Abstract
Background The reference list is an important part of a scientific article. To be useful, it must be accurate. Methods To evaluate the reference accuracy in the Journal of Dermatology and the Korean Journal of Dermatology, we randomly selected 100 references from each journal and checked them against the original articles. Results The overall rate of citation errors was 24% in the Journal of Dermatology and 33% in the Korean Journal of Dermatology. Errors in the title and author names were common, each occurring in about half of the citation errors. The overall rate of quotation errors was 14% in the Journal of Dermatology and 27% in the Korean Journal of Dermatology. Conclusions This study shows that the rate of citation errors is unacceptably high in the Journal of Dermatology and the Korean Journal of Dermatology, which significantly diminishes the value of the reference list. We would strongly urge that the peer review of citation and quotation accuracy should be strengthened.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In Lee and Lee (1999), 28.5% of verified references in two dermatology journals contained at least one error.
“No 28.5% Major: 1.5% Minor: 27%”
From Reference accuracy of primary studies published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals: A scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as Lee and Lee (1999)
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References 7 · Cited by 34
- Authors
- Lee, S. Y., & Lee, J. S.
- Affiliations
- Soonchunhyang University (KR)
- Corresponding author
- Lee, Sung Yul
- Venue
- International Journal of Dermatology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 1999-05
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 357-360
- ISSN
- 0011-9059 (ISSN-L)
- 1365-4632
- OpenAlex
- W2146829924
- Cited by
- 34
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2017: 2 · 2015: 2 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 7.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- International Journal of Dermatology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- 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, peer review, dermatology journals, bibliographic errors
- MeSH terms
- Asia, Dermatology, Periodicals as Topic, Publishing
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.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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