Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri;
Department of Pediatrics, St Louis Children's Hospital, St Louis, Missouri.
Pediatrics. 2018 Apr;141(Suppl 5):S526-S529. doi: 10.1542/peds.2018-0277.
We determined types of peer-reviewed articles that cited case reports and whether citations were "appropriate" or "inappropriate."
The 20 most highly cited case reports published between January 2011 and April 2016 were identified. All articles referencing these 20 case reports were analyzed for appropriateness of the citation. Appropriate citations referred to the original article specifically as a case report or cited the case report in support of general knowledge. Inappropriate citations used case reports to infer causation, support proof of mechanism, or were deemed irrelevant to claims being supported. Two authors independently coded all citations.
These 20 case reports were cited in 479 articles (median: 24 citations per case report). In most articles (83.6%, = 367), case reports were cited appropriately; in 53.4% ( = 196) of articles, a case report was specifically referred to, and in 46.6% ( = 171) of articles, the case report was used to support general knowledge. For inappropriate citations, in 63.3% ( = 50) of articles, case reports were used to infer causation; in 15.2% ( = 12) of articles, they were used as proof of mechanism of pathogenesis or treatment; and in 21.5% ( = 17) of articles, they were irrelevant. Case reports were most commonly cited in review articles (38.7%, = 170) and original studies (31%, = 136). "Original studies" were articles in which authors reported original data, excluding case reports.
These results reveal that most citations of case reports are appropriate.
我们确定了引用病例报告的同行评议文章类型，并确定了这些引用是“恰当”还是“不恰当”。
确定了 2011 年 1 月至 2016 年 4 月期间发表的 20 篇被引用最多的病例报告，分析了所有引用这 20 篇病例报告的文章引用的恰当性。恰当的引用是指明确引用原始文章为病例报告，或引用病例报告来支持一般知识。不恰当的引用则是通过病例报告推断因果关系、支持发病机制的证据，或被认为与所支持的主张无关。两位作者独立对所有引用进行了编码。
这 20 篇病例报告共被 479 篇文章引用（中位数：每篇病例报告 24 次引用）。在大多数文章中（83.6%，=367），病例报告的引用是恰当的；在 53.4%（=196）的文章中，明确引用了病例报告，在 46.6%（=171）的文章中，病例报告用于支持一般知识。对于不恰当的引用，在 63.3%（=50）的文章中，病例报告被用于推断因果关系；在 15.2%（=12）的文章中，被用于发病机制或治疗的证据；在 21.5%（=17）的文章中，病例报告与文章内容无关。病例报告最常被引用在综述文章中（38.7%，=170）和原始研究中（31%，=136）。“原始研究”是指作者报告原始数据的文章，不包括病例报告。
这些结果表明，大多数病例报告的引用是恰当的。
