
Van der Vet and Nijveen ( 2) reported that even retracted articles continue to be cited approvingly years after they have been retracted.

A recent meta-analysis demonstrated that 25.4% of papers contained a citation error ( 1). Many deficits in citation practices unfortunately have been reported. Citations also allow readers to confirm that the cited information supports the authors’ hypotheses and suppositions. They allow the reader to trace the flow of ideas and evidence through a paper, serving as a gateway to other relevant literature. Based on these findings, several actions to reduce citation inaccuracies have been proposed.Ĭitations are an important, but often overloooked, part of every scientific paper. One fifth of inaccurate citations were due to chains of inaccurate citations. The most common problem was the citation of nonexistent findings (38.4%), followed by an incorrect interpretation of findings (15.4%).
#Purebasic elapsed time verification
At least one inaccurate citation was found in 11% and 15% of articles in the feasibility study and verification set, respectively, suggesting that inaccurate citations are common in biomedical literature. A citation was defined as being accurate if the cited article supported or was in accordance with the statement by citing authors. Verification set included 4,912 citations identified in 2,995 articles that cited 13 most cited articles published by authors affiliated with the Mayo Clinic Division of Nephrology and Hypertension. Findings from feasibility study, where we reviewed 1,540 articles containing 2,526 citations of 14 most cited articles in which the authors were affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine University of Belgrade, were further evaluated for external confirmation in an independent verification set of articles. The study included an active participation of the first authors of included papers to first-hand verify the citations accuracy.

The purpose of this study was to examine how often frequently cited papers in biomedical scientific literature are cited inaccurately. Most scientists are aware of citations errors, but few appreciate the prevalence of these problems. They allow the reader to trace the flow of evidence, serving as a gateway to relevant literature. Citations are an important, but often overlooked, part of every scientific paper.
