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Cited by 34Academic Writing and Publishingscientometrics and bibliometrics researchPublishing and Scholarly Communication

Accuracy of Published Medical Reference Citations

Goodrich, June E., Roland, Charles G.·1977·Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
DOI 10.2190/2b2a-f34l-0txg-wnq7
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Abstract

Among 2, 195 reference citations, published during 1975 in ten major US medical journals, 634 (29%) were found to be erroneous on direct checking of the original source. The percentage of error within individual journals ranged from 14 to 50 per cent. Such a high error rate would seem to seriously diminish the usefulness of published reference lists and, possibly, raise questions about the accuracy of other portions of the literature also.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.2190/2b2a-f34l-0txg-wnq7

Cites

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

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?

  • The prevalence of errors of citation found in this study compares closely with the prevalences found by Goodrich and Roland in 1977.

    “These figures compare closely with the prevalences of error found by Goodrich and Roland in their report in 1977 assessing 10 different medical journals.5”

    From How accurate are quotations and references in medical journals? (1985) · cites this paper as [5]

Cites

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Authors
Goodrich, J. E., & Roland, C. G.
Affiliations
Mayo Clinic (US)
Corresponding author
Roland, Charles G.
Venue
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
1977-01
Volume
7
Issue
1
Pages
15-19
ISSN
  • 0047-2816 (ISSN-L)
  • 1541-3780
DOI
10.2190/2b2a-f34l-0txg-wnq7
OpenAlex
W2313083288
Cited by
34
References
0
Citations by year
2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 1 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 1
FWCI
3.55
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (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 errors, medical journals, works cited, citation verification, medical literature

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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