How accurate are citations of frequently cited papers in biomedical literature?
How accurate are citations of frequently cited papers in biomedical literature?
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生物医学文献中经常被引用的论文的引文准确性如何？
DOI：
10.1042/cs20201573
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发表时间：
2021-03-12
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Milic N
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Pavlovic V;Weissgerber T;Stanisavljevic D;Pekmezovic T;Milicevic O;Lazovic JM;Cirkovic A;Savic M;Rajovic N;Piperac P;Djuric N;Madzarevic P;Dimitrijevic A;Randjelovic S;Nestorovic E;Akinyombo R;Pavlovic A;Ghamrawi R;Garovic V;Milic N
引文是每一篇科学论文中重要但经常被忽视的部分。它们使读者能够追踪证据的流向，作为相关文献的门户。大多数科学家都意识到引用错误，但很少有人意识到这些问题的普遍性。本研究的目的是检查在生物医学科学文献中经常被引用的论文被不准确引用的频率。该研究包括纳入论文的第一作者的积极参与;第一手验证引文的准确性。我们审查了1，540篇文章，其中包含作者隶属于贝尔格莱德大学医学院的14篇引用最多的文章中的2，526篇引文，并在独立验证的文章集中进一步评价了可行性研究的结果，以进行外部确认。验证集包括在2，995篇文章中识别的4，912篇引文，这些文章引用了隶属于马约诊所肾病和高血压科的作者发表的13篇被引用最多的文章。如果引用的文章支持或符合引用作者的声明，则引用被定义为准确。在可行性研究和验证集中，分别有11%和15%的文章至少有一次不准确的引用，这表明不准确的引用在生物医学文献中很常见。最常见的问题是引用不存在的发现（38.4%），其次是对发现的错误解释（15.4%）。五分之一的不准确引用是由于不准确引用链。根据这些发现，提出了几项减少引用不准确的行动。
Citations are an important, but often overlooked, part of every scientific paper. They allow the reader to trace the flow of evidence, serving as a gateway to relevant literature. Most scientists are aware of citations errors, but few appreciate the prevalence of these problems. The purpose of this study was to examine how often frequently cited papers in biomedical scientific literature are cited inaccurately. The study included an active participation of the first authors of included papers; to first-hand verify the citations accuracy. 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. 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. A citation was defined as being accurate if the cited article supported or was in accordance with the statement by citing authors. 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. The most common problem was the citation of nonexistent findings (38.4%), followed by an incorrect interpretation of findings (15.4%). One fifth of inaccurate citations were due to chains of inaccurate citations. Based on these findings, several actions to reduce citation inaccuracies have been proposed.