A survey of reference accuracy in five national dental journals.

Previous studies have examined the bibliographic accuracy of citations in medical journals. The purpose of this study was to assess reference accuracy in five national dental journals. One hundred references were randomly selected from the March, 1987, issue of each of five dental journals (a total of 500 references). Each reference was verified either from the original source or from other indexing tools if the original was unavailable. References were divided into two categories: incorrect and correct. The number of incorrect references was counted and subdivided into major and minor errors. The errors were grouped by types of error: author, article title, citation (which included errors in journal title, volume, issue, and page numbers), and "unable to verify". This survey found 211 (42%) inaccuracies out of 500 references reviewed, with a total of 248 errors within the incorrect group. Out of the latter, 173 (70%) were minor errors, and 75 (30%) were major errors. Types of minor errors ranked as follows: minor article title errors, 86 (35%); minor author errors, 61 (25%); and minor citation errors, 26 (10%). Types of major errors were ranked as follows: incorrect journal citation, 32 (13%); "unable to verify", 25 (10%); incorrect author, 10 (4%); and incorrect article title, 8 (3%). The results of this survey showed that nearly half of the references reviewed were inaccurate.