Does Pubmed accurately reflect the content of major plastic surgery journals?

The medical literature is an essential source of information for clinicians and researchers. Previous publications are most often found using electronic databases, the most popular of which is Pubmed. It is imperative that the database correctly reflects the content of the journals; this is especially important in bibliographic studies. We undertook a survey of four plastic surgery journals in order to detect whether and how often mistakes occur in the indexing process.

The contents of the first issue of the years 1956, 1966, 1976, 1986, 1996 and 2006, if published, of: Annals of Plastic Surgery, the British Journal of Plastic Surgery/Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, and the Scandinavian Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, were surveyed.

The bibliographic data were retrieved from the Pubmed database and then compared with the paper version of the journals. All types of publications were included, except for book reviews and announcements.

A total of 19 issues was surveyed. In the printed journals we found 437 eligible publications but only 426 references in Pubmed. The following errors were found: Eleven missing references (11 out of 437 publications, 2.5%), these included one paper, four editorials, four letters and two obituaries. There were three mistakes in author names (0.7%) and one mistake in the title (0.23%). No mistakes were found in the page numbers. Other issues found but not defined as mistakes were: six discussions that were not indexed, 15 discussions whose authors were not credited and seven replies to letters that were not mentioned.

Of the missed references, only one was a paper, and four were letters or brief communications which usually have a lower scientific impact. The other missed references were editorials and obituaries, which certainly have their merit and importance but this is often more philosophical and historical than scientific. The referencing policy for these types of publication seems to be ambiguous and that may explain those omissions. The one mistake found in the title was minimal and would not influence an electronic search. The three mistakes in author names, although rare, can be disturbing in cases in which a search is done based on the authors' name as well as for the citation statistics of the authors.

Our results are similar to those found in other fields of medicine.1, 2

Our survey demonstrates that Pubmed accurately reflects the content of the plastic surgery journals analysed, and the mistakes found have a limited impact.