Accuracy of Five National Dental Journal Citations 1987 vs 2007

Title: Accuracy of Five National Dental Journal Citations 1987-2007

Objectives:  Doms (1987) reported that 42.2% of the citations in five dental journals contained errors.  The purpose of this study was to see if there has been any change in accuracy twenty years later.  With the technological advances of 2007, we predicted that accuracy would have improved.

Methods: A simple random sample of 100 references was selected from the March 2007 issues of the same five dental journals surveyed by Doms (1987) (total n=500). References were verified against Medline and classified as accurate or as containing major, minor, or unable to verify errors.  Major errors were anything that hindered or prevented an average user from locating the article.  Minor errors were anything that was incorrect, but did not prevent locating the article.  Unable to verify was used if the citation was not located by the researchers.  The 2007 error rate was compared to the 1987 error rate using a single sample test for proportions from clustered binomial data with resampling (5000 samples; bootstrap method). 

Results:  In 2007, 27.0% of the references contained errors (SE=0.048; 95% CI= 0.176 to 0.363).  The overall error rate in 2007 was significantly lower than that in 1987 (Z=3.19, p<.001).  The 1987 and 2007 error rates for each journal are displayed in Table 1.  12.8% of the 2007 references contained major errors, 18.4% contained minor errors, and 1.2% could not be verified.

Table 1.

Journal	1987 errors (%)	2007 errors (%)
JADA	45	33
J Dent Child	38	44
J Dent Res	37	15
J Perio	49	17
OOO	42	26

Conclusion:  Four out of the five journals surveyed showed improvements in citation accuracy and the overall error rate declined from 1987 to 2007.  Technological advances may explain the improved accuracy of citations in dental journals, however, it has not entirely eliminated the errors.