Abstract

SILVA HERNANDEZ, Dania; RODRIGUEZ FELIZOLA, María Caridad  and  DEL CAMPO PENA, Ana Dolores. The references of original and review articles found in the Cuban medical journals. Rev Cubana Salud Pública [online]. 2013, vol.39, n.1, pp. 0-0. ISSN 0864-3466.

Objective: To characterize the references of the original and review articles in the Cuban biomedical journals in terms of number, update and detected errors. Methods: The two first issues of 13 journals published in 2011. The average number of references per type of article and journal were estimated. The reference update was rated as good if 50% or more in the original papers and 70% or over in the review articles had been published in the last 5 years. Ten examples of references taken from received peer-reviewed manuscripts illustrated the errors. Results: The number of references analyzed was 4 824. The average number ranged 10 to 25 in original articles and over 25 in review articles. Revista Cubana de Medicina General Integral reached 60.6% of updated references in the original articles whereas Estomatologia y Medicina Militar showed 97.7% and 82.7% of updated references in the review articles, respectively. The inadequate use of the punctuation marks, electronic addresses and omission of source data were the most common errors. Conclusions: The original papers and the review papers presented suitable number of references; but update is not satisfactory. The errors detected lead to inaccurate references that are almost irretrievable. The external peer-reviewers may improve the quality of references, but the ultimate responsible is the author, who must include good quality references in terms of number, accuracy and update.

Keywords : references; original articles; review articles; external peer reviewers.

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