Background

Inaccurate citations are erroneous quotations or instances of paraphrasing of previously published material that mislead readers about the claims of the cited source. They are often unaddressed due to underreporting, the inability of peer reviewers and editors to detect them, and editors’ reluctance to publish corrections about them. In this paper, we propose a new tool that could be used to tackle their circulation.

Methods

We provide a review of available data about inaccurate citations and analytically explore current ways of reporting and dealing with these inaccuracies. Consequently, we make a distinction between publication (i.e., first occurrence) and circulation (i.e., reuse) of inaccurate citations. Sloppy reading of published items, literature ambiguity and insufficient quality control in the editorial process are identified as factors that contribute to the publication of inaccurate citations. However, reiteration or copy-pasting without checking the validity of citations, paralleled with lack of resources/motivation to report/correct inaccurate citations contribute to their circulation.

Results and discussion

We propose the development of an online annotation tool called “MyCites” as means with which to mark and map inaccurate citations. This tool allows ORCID users to annotate citations and alert authors (of the cited and citing articles) and also editors of journals where inaccurate citations are published. Each marked citation would travel with the digital version of the document (persistent identifiers) and be visible on websites that host peer-reviewed articles (journals’ websites, Pubmed, etc.). In the future development of MyCites, challenges such as the conditions of correct/incorrect-ness and parties that should adjudicate that, and, the issue of dealing with incorrect reports need to be addressed.

中文翻译：

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MyCites：在学术出版物中标记和报告不准确引用的建议

背景

不准确的引用是错误的引用或对先前发表的材料的解释，这些材料会误导读者对所引用来源的主张。由于报告不足，同行评审员和编辑无法发现它们，以及编辑不愿发表关于它们的更正，它们通常没有得到解决。在本文中，我们提出了一种可用于解决其流通问题的新工具。

方法

我们回顾了有关不准确引用的可用数据，并分析性地探索了当前报告和处理这些不准确之处的方法。因此，我们对不准确引用的出版（即首次出现）和流通（即重复使用）进行了区分。对已发表项目的阅读草率、文献含糊不清和编辑过程中的质量控制不足被确定为导致发表不准确引文的因素。然而，重复或复制粘贴而不检查引用的有效性，同时缺乏资源/动机来报告/纠正不准确的引用，这有助于它们的传播。

结果与讨论

我们建议开发一种名为“MyCites”的在线注释工具，作为标记和映射不准确引用的手段。该工具允许 ORCID 用户注释引文并提醒作者（被引和被引文章的）以及发表不准确引文的期刊的编辑。每个标记的引文都将与文档的数字版本（持久标识符）一起传播，并在托管同行评审文章的网站（期刊网站、Pubmed 等）上可见。在 MyCites 的未来发展中，需要解决正确/不正确的条件和应裁定的各方等挑战，以及处理错误报告的问题。