Nancy A. Wilmes

Accuracy of references in general readership nursing journals.

Accuracy in references is essential to retrieve cited documents and to give authors credit for their work. The purpose of this study was to examine the number and types of reference errors in 3 general readership nursing journals: American Journal of Nursing, Nursing Outlook, and RN. Of the 130 references examined, 33 contained errors, for an overall error rate of 25%. Major errors, mistakes that could impede document retrieval, occurred in 19% of the references; most of these errors were mistakes in issue numbers or missing issue numbers, which are needed when the pages are not numbered consecutively across the volume. The journal with an in-house librarian who verifies the accuracy of references had few errors in citations. When authors are responsible for verifying the accuracy of their references, errors seem to be inevitable. Suggestions are included for avoiding errors in references.

Web citations in the nursing literature: how accurate are they?

One problem with using Web citations is whether those documents will be available over time. We examined 573 Web citations in articles published in nursing journals and checked their availability (either by direct link or by searching the main site). There was a mean of 3.1 Web citations per article. Most Web citations were to documents that related to clinical practice, for example, clinical guidelines and explanations of clinical conditions and treatments. Of the 573 Web citations, 414 (72.3%) were still available; of those, 229 (55.3%) were able to be accessed by direct link and the other 185 (44.7%) by searching the main Web site. However, 159 (27.7%) of the references were not available, not even by searching the Internet using key terms from the citation. Considering that more than a fourth of the Web citations in this study were no longer available, authors need to be cautious about using the Web as a primary source of information for their publications.

Providing Mobile Librarian Service to a College of Nursing to Increase Interactions and Transactions: One Wayne State University, Science and Technology Librarian's Experience

A mobile librarian service to the Wayne State University College of Nursing was developed to provide in-person reference and research support. This service has been successfully used for eight semesters by College of Nursing faculty, graduate students, and some undergraduates for support of research and course work. This article will address the details and provide a description of the service.

Reference accuracy in neonatal-maternal nursing literature.

Purpose: To identify the frequency and types of reference errors in neonatal-maternal nursing literature. This study was an extension of earlier research on reference accuracy in pediatric and critical care nursing journals. Design: A random sample was selected of references in three nursing journals: Neonatal Network: The Journal of Neonatal Nursing; Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, and Neonatal Nursing; and The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing. References were compared against original publications, and errors were classified as major or minor based on criteria used in earlier studies. Results: Fifty-four of the 221 references had errors, for an overall error rate of 24.4 percent. Major errors were found in 21.3 percent of the references, and minor errors were calculated at 3.2 percent. Errors in the author’s name were most common, followed by errors in titles of articles and books. The rates of reference errors in this study were lower than those reported previously in the nursing and medical literature.