Background: The reference list is an important part of a scientific article. To be useful, it must be accurate.
Methods: To evaluate the reference accuracy in the Journal of Dermatology and the Korean Journal of Dermatology, we randomly selected 100 references from each journal and checked them against the original articles.
Results: The overall rate of citation errors was 24% in the Journal of Dermatology and 33% in the Korean Journal of Dermatology. Errors in the title and author names were common, each occurring in about half of the citation errors. The overall rate of quotation errors was 14% in the Journal of Dermatology and 27% in the Korean Journal of Dermatology.
Conclusions: This study shows that the rate of citation errors is unacceptably high in the Journal of Dermatology and the Korean Journal of Dermatology, which significantly diminishes the value of the reference list. We would strongly urge that the peer review of citation and quotation accuracy should be strengthened.