School of Dentistry Library, University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Public Services, McNichols Campus Library, University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Med Ref Serv Q. 2023 Jul-Sep;42(3):211-227. doi: 10.1080/02763869.2023.2214038.
This study examines the frequency of misspellings in health sciences literature and explores how they affect citation retrieval in multiple databases. Searches for commonly misspelled medical words were conducted in PubMed, CINAHL Complete, APA PsycArticles (ProQuest), APA PsycInfo, and ProQuest Psychology databases. Citations that would be retrieved using a word's correct spelling were removed from the search results. Remaining results were citations that could only be retrieved if the word was misspelled in the search. Articles with clinical significance were targeted. The top five most commonly misspelled words were occurrence, ophthalmology, pruritus, sagittal, and resistance. Ophthalmology had the highest number of citations that contained at least one misspelling, with 57% of those citations "missing" when searched with the correct spelling of the word. The word with the highest percentage (82%) of missed citations was arrhythmia. The results of this study indicate that misspellings in scholarly literature are more prevalent than searchers might realize. The ability to retrieve citations is adversely affected by misspellings, which has the potential to affect patient care. Many opportunities exist in the editorial process to identify and correct misspellings before publication. This is less so once a journal is published. The implications for database searching and manuscript evaluation are discussed.
本研究考察了健康科学文献中拼写错误的频率，并探讨了它们如何影响多个数据库中的引文检索。在 PubMed、CINAHL Complete、APA PsycArticles（ProQuest）、APA PsycInfo 和 ProQuest Psychology 数据库中对常见拼写错误的医学单词进行了搜索。从搜索结果中删除了使用单词正确拼写可以检索到的引文。剩下的结果是只能在搜索中拼写错误的情况下才能检索到的引文。以具有临床意义的文章为目标。拼写错误频率最高的五个单词是 occurrence、ophthalmology、pruritus、sagittal 和 resistance。ophthalmology 一词的引文包含至少一个拼写错误，其中 57%的引文在使用该词的正确拼写进行搜索时“缺失”。出现错误最多的引文百分比（82%）是心律失常。本研究结果表明，学术文献中的拼写错误比搜索者可能意识到的更为普遍。拼写错误会对引文检索造成负面影响，这有可能影响患者护理。在出版前的编辑过程中有很多机会可以识别和纠正拼写错误。一旦期刊出版，这种情况就较少了。讨论了对数据库搜索和手稿评估的影响。
