Dataset Information

How accurate are citations of frequently cited papers in biomedical literature?

ABSTRACT: 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 the present 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 1540 articles containing 2526 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 4912 citations identified in 2995 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.

SUBMITTER: Pavlovic V

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8048031 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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How accurate are citations of frequently cited papers in biomedical literature?

Pavlovic Vedrana V Weissgerber Tracey T Stanisavljevic Dejana D Pekmezovic Tatjana T Milicevic Ognjen O Lazovic Jelena Milin JM Cirkovic Andja A Savic Marko M Rajovic Nina N Piperac Pavle P Djuric Nemanja N Madzarevic Petar P Dimitrijevic Ana A Randjelovic Simona S Nestorovic Emilija E Akinyombo Remi R Pavlovic Andrija A Ghamrawi Ranine R Garovic Vesna V Milic Natasa N

Clinical science (London, England : 1979) 20210301 5

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 the present 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 p ...[more]

PMID: 33599711

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Project description:Research in computer systems often involves the engineering, implementation, and measurement of complex systems software and data. The availability of these artifacts is critical to the reproducibility and replicability of the research results, because system software often embodies numerous implicit assumptions and parameters that are not fully documented in the research article itself. Artifact availability has also been previously associated with higher paper impact, as measured by citations counts. And yet, the sharing of research artifacts is still not as common as warranted by its importance. The primary goal of this study is to provide an exploratory statistical analysis of the artifact-sharing rates and associated factors in the research field of computer systems. To this end, we explore a cross-sectional dataset of papers from 56 contemporaneous systems conferences. In addition to extensive data on the conferences, papers, and authors, this analyze dataset includes data on the release, ongoing availability, badging, and locations of research artifacts. We combine this manually curated dataset with citation counts to evaluate the relationships between different artifact properties and citation metrics. Additionally, we revisit previous observations from other fields on the relationships between artifact properties and various other characteristics of papers, authors, and venue and apply them to this field. The overall rate of artifact sharing we find in this dataset is approximately 30%, although it varies significantly with paper, author, and conference factors, and it is closer to 43% for conferences that actively evaluated artifact sharing. Approximately 20% of all shared artifacts are no longer accessible four years after publications, predominately when hosted on personal and academic websites. Our main finding is that papers with shared artifacts averaged approximately 75% more citations than papers with none. Even after controlling for numerous confounding covariates, the release of an artifact appears to increase the citations of a systems paper by some 34%. This metric is further boosted by the open availability of the paper's text.

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Dataset Information

How accurate are citations of frequently cited papers in biomedical literature?

Publications

How accurate are citations of frequently cited papers in biomedical literature?

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