Original articleCharacteristics and Longevity of Electronic Citations in Four Leading Biomedical Journals in SpainCaracterísticas y evolución temporal de las citas electrónicas de cuatro de las principales revistas biomédicas españolas
Section snippets
INTRODUCTION
Electronic citations (EC) have become more common in biomedical journal publications in the past decade. In 2003, a study of 3 international, high-impact journals reported that 30% of articles contained at least 1 EC, accounting for 2.6% of all references at that time.1 Electronic citations are now used to such an extent that they are ranked third in terms of reference type, after biomedical journal articles and books.2
Electronic resources have major advantages over traditional print
Study Design
A cross-sectional, descriptive study was performed using systematic sampling to cover all the references in articles published in the first issue of each even year from 2002 to 2012 in REC, Emergencias, Revista Clínica Española and Medicina Clínica. We selected these Spanish medical journals due to their wide dissemination and scientific impact in 2011 (with respective impact factors for that year of 2.530, 2.486, 2.008, and 1.385, and quartile scores of Q2, Q1, Q2 and Q2 in their subject
Frequency of Electronic Citations
We included 377 published articles, with a total of 7077 references. There were 73 articles (19.4%; 95% confidence interval [95%CI], 15.2%-23.5%) with at least 1 EC. Among the full sample, 164 (2.3%; 95%CI, 2.0%-2.7%) were ECs. The EC percentage differed significantly among the journals (P = .009) and was lower in REC than in Medicina Clínica and Emergencias (P < .05) (Table 1).
At least 1 EC was present in almost half the special articles (Table 2). The percentage of ECs was highest in special
DISCUSSION
The first important finding in this study is that the frequency of EC use has increased markedly over the years. However, although 19.4% of articles had at least 1 EC (increasing to 27.3% in 2012), EC frequency compared with total references is still negligible (2.2% in total, and 3.5% in 2012). The percentage of ECs in REC was notably lower than in the other journals, although it has increased more over time than in the non-REC group. We found that the number of ECs was influenced by the type
CONCLUSIONS
Despite these limitations, this study reflects the growing presence of ECs in some Spanish biomedical journals, and in REC in particular, as well as reduced link accessibility over time. The EC quality is far from optimal, and errors often make it impossible to access the information in references. Finally, this study shows that if the link does not directly open the document in question, ECs can be retrieved more readily if they contain recommended additional information. For this reason,
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
None declared.
Acknowledgments
This study has been funded in part by a grant awarded by Generalitat de Catalunya SGR 2009/1385 to the Grupo de Investigación Consolidado “Urgencias: procesos y patologías”. (“Emergencies: processes and pathologies” Consolidated Research Group).
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