This study was to investigate the reference accuracy in major nursing journals in Korea.

The references in articles from eight nursing journals from 2006 were compared with PubMed for authors, year, title, journal, volume, and page accuracy. Four hundred sixty-six references were reviewed. Errors were classified as major or minor and categorized by bibliographic headings (author, title, journal, year, volume and page).

Of the 466 references, 223 (47.9%) had citation errors. The reference error rates ranged from 28.6% to 58.7%. Most errors occurred in the author element (37.9%), followed by title (20.9%), journal (19.0%), page (13.9%), volume (5.9%), and year (2.4%).

This study identified a considerable error rate in the references of nursing journals. Inaccuracy of references is a reflection on scholarly work of authors and journals. Authors and Editorial committees are responsible for the accuracy of references.