An erroneous label appeared in Table 1 on page 226 of an article in the Mar/Apr 2005 issue of JAMIA (Aronsky DA, Ransom J, Robinson K. Accuracy of references in five biomedical informatics journals. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2005; 12, 225–8). The second row in Table 1 (originally labeled “Total references”) actually contained the numbers for “excluded references” instead of the numbers for “total references” as the label had suggested. The correct Table 1 follows below, and includes rows that provide the numbers for total references and for excluded references.
Table 1.
Reference Errors in Five Biomedical Informatics Journals
| J Am Med Inform Assoc | J Biomed Inform | Int J Med Inform | Methods Inf Med | Artif Intell Med | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total articles | 10 | 6 | 7 | 10 | 4 |
| Total references | 322 | 305 | 368 | 240 | 121 |
| Excluded references | 141 | 130 | 223 | 131 | 75 |
| Included references | 181 | 175 | 145 | 109 | 46 |
| References with any errors | 40 | 70 | 59 | 38 | 18 |
| Reference error rate (%) | 22.1 | 40.0 | 40.7 | 34.9 | 39 |
| Total errors | 56 | 105 | 73 | 52 | 25 |
| Journal title errors | 11 | 19 | 43 | 16 | 8 |
| Authors errors | 27 | 49 | 19 | 21 | 5 |
| Title errors | 12 | 22 | 7 | 8 | 6 |
| Year errors | 2 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Volume errors | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Page number errors | 4 | 9 | 1 | 4 | 5 |