Reference accuracy in the Journal of Hand Surgery.

Abstract

An accurate listing of cited references in journal articles is important for the reader. Many studies have revealed errors in the references cited in a variety of subspecialty journals. We believe that a similar amount of errors, relative to other subspecialty journals, exists in the Journal of Hand Surgery. One hundred randomly selected references from each of the 1985 and 1995 Journal of Hand Surgery volumes were analyzed for accuracy of the journal name, title, author name(s), year, volume, and page number(s). References were considered without error if they matched the original article exactly. In 1985, 30% of the references examined contained one or more errors as compared with 11% in 1995. These error rates are similar to those found in studies of other biomedical journals. Perhaps the decrease in the quantity of errors present in 1995 versus that of 1985 is related to the implementation of a more stringent, revised set of instructions to submitting authors imposed in 1995.