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Citation error itself, is a field of study that would consume an
average scholar’s life. And this suggests at least, that most cited is not
necessarily most read, as has been put in some responses so far. It seems
authors do cite inaccurately and quote inappropriately [1].
Usually, evaluations of citation accuracy come from within a given
field – eg. anaesthetics, surgery, geriatric nursing. The only field that
I know of that publishes little or no such evaluation of citation accuracy
is neurology, though obviously the feild has it's errors.
[1]McLellan MF, Case LD, Barnett MC. Trust, but verify. The accuracy
of references in four anesthesia journals. Anesthesiology. 1992
Jul;77(1):185-8. PMID: 1609991 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
I'm slightly concerned by the conclusions drawn by the author. It
was not clear how the 'hits' are counted for each article. Do the hits
only refer to people reading the full text?
With regard to the hypothesis that readers judge the "scientific
value" of a paper I can see no evidence presented to support this. I
would be more supportive of this notion if the hit rate showed people went
from reading the abstract to reading the full text. If this is the case
it is not presented in the paper.
Either way isn't a simpler conclusion and more obvious conclusion
"those papers that are read more are cited more"? If a paper isn't read
it isn't going to be cited!
Citation errors
Citation error itself, is a field of study that would consume an
average scholar’s life. And this suggests at least, that most cited is not
necessarily most read, as has been put in some responses so far. It seems
authors do cite inaccurately and quote inappropriately [1].
Usually, evaluations of citation accuracy come from within a given
field – eg. anaesthetics, surgery, geriatric nursing. The only field that
I know of that publishes little or no such evaluation of citation accuracy
is neurology, though obviously the feild has it's errors.
[1]McLellan MF, Case LD, Barnett MC. Trust, but verify. The accuracy
of references in four anesthesia journals. Anesthesiology. 1992
Jul;77(1):185-8. PMID: 1609991 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests