The accuracy of MEDLINE and Journal contents pages for papers published inClinical Otolaryngology

MEDLINE is widely used as a source for identifying and reviewing medical jo urnal literature. Its accuracy is generally taken fur granted, as is that. of the contents pages published by the journals themselves. In this study o f citation accuracy we examined the articles published in Clinical Otolaryn gology and Allied Sciences from 1976 to 1998. The entries in MEDLINE were c ompared with the entries in the Journal's contents pages, and with the actu al articles. Of 1651 articles published in the journal, one was omitted fro m MEDLINE and 25 (1.5%) were incorrectly cited, while 88 (5.3%) were incorr ectly cited in the contents pages. Twenty-one (84%) of the errors in MEDLIN E involved names of authors. Apart from incomplete retrieval of information for practice and research, errors could result in an author not getting cr edit for publications.