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First published November 23, 2004 as JAMIA PrePrint; doi:10.1197/jamia.M1683
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 2005;12(2):225-228
© 2005 American Medical Informatics Association

A more recent version of this article appeared on March 1, 2005
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Submitted on August 25, 2004
Accepted on October 29, 2004

Accuracy of References in Five Biomedical Informatics Journals

Dominik Aronsky MD, PhD1*, Joel Ransom MBA, MHA2, and Kevin Robinson2

Affiliation of the authors: 1 Department of Biomedical Informatics and Emergency Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN; 2 School of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Nashville, TN

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Objective To determine the rate and type of errors in biomedical informatics journal article references.

Methods References in articles from the first 2004 issues of five biomedical informatics journals, "Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association", "Journal of Biomedical Informatics", "International Journal of Medical Informatics", "Methods of Information in Medicine", and "Artificial Intelligence in Medicine" were compared to MEDLINE® for journal, authors, title, year, volume and page number accuracy. If discrepancies were identified, the reference was compared against the original publication. Two reviewers independently evaluated each reference.

Results The five journal issues contained 37 articles. Among the 656 eligible references, 225 (34.3%) included at least one error. Among the 225 references a total of 311 errors were identified. One or more errors were found in the bibliography of 31 (84%) of the 37 articles. The reference error rates by journal ranged from 22.1% to 40.7%. Most errors (39.0%) occurred in the author element, followed by the journal (31.2%), title (17.7%), page (7.4%), year (3.5%), and volume (1.3%) information.

Conclusion The study identified a considerable error rate in the references of five biomedical informatics journals. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of references and should more carefully check them, possibly using informatics-based assistance.




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[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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