Print versus Electronic Media in Medical Publishing
In the days when print media reigned supreme,
one occasionally had difficulty tracking down a
reference. Perhaps the author did not cite the
item correctly, or it appeared in an obscure journal
that no nearby library owned. Web-based sources
for reference and research are now gaining in popularity.
Though convenient to use, these sources introduce
a new accessibility wrinkle—they can outright
disappear. In “Going, going, gone: Lost Internet
references”, Robert Dellavalle and his colleagues
look at the frequency, style, and stability of
Internet references in the New England Journal
of Medicine, JAMA, and Science from a six-week
period in each of the last three years.
Key findings:
- 30% of articles had at least one Internet reference
- Frequency of Internet citation increased in
the two medical journals during the study period
- Inactive references increased over time – 3.8%
at 3 months, 10% at 15 months, 13% at 27 months
- Commercial Internet sites were most likely
to have become inactive (46% of inactive references
at 27 months were .coms)
- Organizational Internet sites were the most
stable (5% of inactive references at 27 months
were .orgs)
- Use of access dates in citations varied greatly
among the journals and throughout the study period
Source:
Dellavalle, R.P., et al. (2003). Going, going, gone: Lost
Internet references. Science, 302, 787-788.
While frowned upon in theory, duplicate publication
is a reality within medical literature. A recent
article from JAMA examines this phenomenon and
reports on different patterns that emerge among
the duplicates. Erik von Elm and colleagues find
that 8.3% of the articles in a series of systematic
reviews are duplicate publications. Further, 63%
of those duplicate publications provide no cross-references
to the articles from which they stem.
Source:
von Elm, E., Poglia, G., Walder, B., and Tramer, M.R. (2004).
Different patterns of duplicate publication: An analysis
of articles used in systematic reviews. JAMA, 291(8), 974-980.
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