Reference Lists in Medical Journals—Language and Length

Abstract

ABSTRACT. A total of 8251 references from seven medical journals from four language areas (English, French, German and Swedish) have been studied. The mean number of references per article varies from 13 to 27, the range is wide (2–63). Six per cent of the references are more than 25 years old and most of them could probably be omitted. The English language predominates to the degree (91 %) that there is practically no influx from other language areas than those included in the study. A Medline search shows a much higher proportion of references in other languages (English 59%) and makes it likely that non‐English references to a large degree are neglected by authors writing and reading only English. It is concluded that it should be possible to limit the number of references per original article to 20–25.

Reflections on References

“…Exclude old references, exclude standard references and use only those that are recent and clearly important. The study already referred to (2) shows that it is possible to shorten the lists. Some journals have already introduced upper limits, as low as 15 references, all the others encourage short lists without having put formal restrictions.…”

Denkstil und Sprache/n in den Wissenschaften. Mit Beispielen aus der Medizin

“…Lemmer und Middeke (2008) (Navarro 1995(Navarro , 1996a(Navarro , 1996b(Navarro , 1997. In spanischen, niederländischen und skandinavischen Medizinzeitschriften wurde dieser Trend bereits seit den 1950er Jahren festgestellt (Navarro 1996c, 1996d, Boettiger 1983. Da gerade die zitierte Literatur den Rahmen für die eigene Forschung schafft, der die Autoren zur Beteiligung an wissenschaftlichen Diskussionen der "scientific community" legitimiert, muss eine starke Orientierung an forschungsmethodischen Entscheidungen aus dem englischsprachigen Raum angenommen werden.…”