Citation Accuracy in the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Literature

Objectives: Readers frequently assume that the references in an article published in a well-respected, peer-reviewed journal will be cited correctly. However, previous studies have shown that this is not always true. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the citation accuracy in five oral and maxillofacial surgery journals.

Methods: The journals included were the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery; Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology, Oral Radiology, Endodontics (Triple O); International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery; British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery; and the Journal of Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery. A search was done using PubMed to locate the articles cited in first 3 references of the first 6 issues of each journal in 2005, except for Triple O where 3 articles from 2004 and 2005 were used. If the article could not be located, a search was done in the specific journal in the medical library. The references were then divided into those with major errors that prevented the article from being located and those with minor errors that still permitted the article to be found.

Results: There were a significant number of citations with major errors in each of the journals that made it impossible to find these articles (range- 2.8% to 11.1%). No correlation was found between the number of major or minor errors and the rank of the senior author or if the article was submitted from a non-English speaking country.

Conclusions: This study shows that there needs to be a greater effort on the part of authors to provide accurate citations in their articles.