How accurate is the neurosurgery literature? A review of references
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE - NEUROSURGERY GENERAL
How accurate is the neurosurgery literature? A review of references Thiago S. Montenegro 1 & Kevin Hines 1 & Glenn A. Gonzalez 1 & Umma Fatema 1 & Paul P. Partyka 2,3 & Sara Thalheimer 1 & James Harrop 1 Received: 10 August 2020 / Accepted: 7 September 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Background The reference list is an important part of academic manuscripts. The goal of this study is to evaluate the reference accuracy in the field of neurosurgery. Methods This study examines four major peer-reviewed neurosurgery journals, chosen based on their clinical impact factor: Neurosurgery, J Neurosurg, World Neurosurg, and Acta Neurochir. For each of the four journals, five articles from each of the journal’s 12 issues published in 2019 were randomly selected using an online generator. This resulted in a total of 240 articles, 60 from each journal. Additionally, from each article’s list of references, one reference was again randomly selected and checked for a citation or quotation error. The chi-square test was used to analyze the association between the occurrence of citation and quotation errors and the presence of hypothesized risk factors that could impact reference accuracy. Results 62.1% of articles had a minor citation error, 8.33% had a major citation error, 12.1% had a minor quotation error, and 5.8% of articles had a major quotation error. Overall, Acta Neurochir presented with the fewest quotation errors compared with the other journals evaluated. The only association between the frequency of errors and potential markers of reference mistakes was with the length of the bibliography. Surprisingly, this correlation indicated that the articles with longer reference lists had fewer citation errors (p < 0.01). Statistical significance was found between the occurrence of citation errors and the journals of publication (p < 0.01). Conclusions In order to advance medical treatment and patient care in neurosurgery, detailed documentation and attention to detail are necessary. The results from this analysis illustrate that improved reference accuracy is required. Keywords Reference accuracy . Reference list . Citation error . Quotation error . Neurosurgery literature
Introduction This article is part of the Topical Collection on Neurosurgery general No portion of the paper has been published or is under review in any other journal. Presentation at a conference: This paper has not been presented in any conference. * Thiago S. Montenegro [email protected] 1
Division of Spine and Peripheral Nerve Surgery, Department of Neurosurgery, Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Hospital for Neuroscience, 901 Walnut Street 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107, USA
2
School of Osteopathic Medicine, Rowan University, Stratford, NJ, USA
3
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA
The reference list is an important part of academic manuscripts. The authors rely on references to validate and le
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