Accuracy of cited references: The role of citation databases

Abstract

The nature and extent of errors made by Science Citation Index Expanded™ (SCIE) and SciFinder® Scholar™ (SFS) during data entry have been characterized by analysis of more than 5,400 cited articles from 204 randomly selected cited-article lists published in three core chemistry journals. Failure to map cited articles to target-source articles was due to transcription errors, target-source article errors, omitted cited articles, and reason unknown. Mapping error rates ranged from 1.2 to 6.9 percent. SCIE and SFS also were found to correct errors made by authors in cited-article lists roughly one-half and one-sixth of the time, respectively.