Reference accuracy in spine surgery
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The references list is an important part of a scientific article that serves to confirm the accuracy of the authors’ statements. The goal of this study was to evaluate the reference accuracy in the field of spine surgery. METHODS: Four major peer-reviewed spine surgery journals were chosen for this study based on their subspecialty clinical impact factors. Sixty articles per journal were selected from 12 issues each of The Spine Journal, Spine, and Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine, and 40 articles were selected from 8 issues of Global Spine Journal, for a total of 220 articles. All the articles were published in 2019 and were selected using computer-generated numbers. From the references list of each article, one reference was again selected by using a computer-generated number and then checked for citation or quotation errors. RESULTS: The results indicate that 84.1% of articles have a minor citation error, 4.5% of articles have a major citation error, 9.5% of articles have a minor quotation error, and 9.1% of articles have a major quotation error. Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine had the fewest citation errors compared with the other journals evaluated in this study. Using chi-square analysis, no association was determined between the occurrence of errors and potential markers of reference mistakes. Still, statistical significance was found between the occurrence of citation errors and the spine journals tested. CONCLUSIONS: In order to advance medical treatment and patient care in spine surgery, detailed documentation and attention to detail are necessary. The results from this study illustrate that improved reference accuracy is required.
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?
Correct indexing of author information is important for the author's metrics of scholarship such as the h-index.
“Lastly, correct indexing of author information is important for the author's metrics of scholarship such as the h-index (Montenegro et al., 2021;Serenko et al., 2021).”
From Reference accuracy of primary studies published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals: A scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as Montenegro et al., 2021
In Montenegro et al. (2021), 21.7% of verified references in four neurosurgery journals contained at least one error.
“Yes 21.7% Major: 8.3%.Minor: 13.3%”
From Reference accuracy of primary studies published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals: A scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as Montenegro et al. (2021)
These findings have been demonstrated in other surgical specialties and subspecialties, with a quotation error rate of 7.8% to 18.6%.
“These findings have been demonstrated in other surgical specialties and subspecialties, with a quotation error rate of 7.8% to 18.6%10,17-19.”
From Quotation Errors in High-Impact-Factor Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Journals (2021) · cites this paper as [10]
The current sample size is in line with previous literature on the topic.
“the current sample size is in line with previous literature on the topic2,10,18,19.”
From Quotation Errors in High-Impact-Factor Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Journals (2021) · cites this paper as [10]
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 19 · Cited by 12
- Authors
- Montenegro, T. S., Hines, K., Partyka, P. P., & Harrop, J.
- Affiliations
- Thomas Jefferson University (US)
- Rowan University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Harrop, James
- Venue
- Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine
- Published
- 2021-01
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 22-26
- ISSN
- 1547-5646 (ISSN-L)
- 1547-5654
- OpenAlex
- W3089257620
- Cited by
- 12
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 8.36
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Neurosurgery Spine (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-reviewed journals, scientific writing quality
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 ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
