DO AUTHORS CHECK THEIR REFERENCES - A SURVEY OF 500 REFERENCES FROM THE JOURNAL-OF-ORAL-AND-MAXILLOFACIAL-SURGERY

From a systematic study of 500 references randomly selected in the Jan uary through July, 1992, issues of the Journal of Oral and Maxillofaci al Surgery, it was found that 26% had errors. 6.2% of the referenced a rticles could not be found at all; either due to the fact that they we re obscure foreign articles, their age made it difficult to verify, th ey cited non-peer reviewed journals, or the references cited journals that possibly did not exist. The remaining references were verified ei ther from the original source or from other indexing tools if the orig inal was not available.