On accuracy in references

Surprisingly, one aspect of the culture of scientific publication is commonly inaccurate and sloppy, at best, but is nevertheless apparently widely accepted. I refer to the accuracy of referencing of quoted material referred to in the text. Scientists are commonly poor at writing accurate references to specific ideas in the text of their papers, usually referring to the minimal ‘Someone (20**)’ when the more informative ‘Someone (20**, p. 00)’ is really what is required. Henige, a historian and editor, recently showed scientists to be among the least accurate academics in referencing.1 Although Donovan attempted to salvage the honour of at least the paleontologists, he was not entirely successful.2 His sample of 16 journals in paleontology (see Table 1), albeit small, was nevertheless more than five times the size of the sample of three scientific journals in Henige’s study. Superficially, Donovan’s study demonstrated that paleontologists commonly do include references to page and/or figure numbers of cited references. However, this record is not as good as it seems. Complete citations are only common in systematic papers with tabulated synonymy lists. Rather than saving the good name of paleontology, Donovan 74 Stephen K. Donovan