Reference Accuracy Study

A reference accuracy study verifies the references in published work against their sources to estimate how often citations are wrong, distinguishing bibliographic errors (mistakes in author, title, year, volume, or pages) from quotation errors (cases where the cited source does not actually support the claim attributed to it). The method draws a sample of references, checks each one against the original document, and reports error rates as proportions with confidence intervals, often classifying errors by severity. Such studies have repeatedly found troubling rates: reviews of medical research, synthesized by Mogull (2017), put the quotation error rate near 14.5 percent, and Smith and Cumberledge (2020) found substantial quotation errors even in general science journals. For libraries and editors, these studies justify citation-checking services and reference-verification workflows.