Web Citations in the Nursing Literature: How Accurate Are They?

One problem with using Web citations is whether those documents will be available over time. We examined 573 Web citations in articles published in nursing journals and checked their availability (either by direct link or by searching the main site). There was a mean of 3.1 Web citations per article...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of professional nursing 2008-11, Vol.24 (6), p.347-351
Main Authors: Oermann, Marilyn H., Nordstrom, Cheryl K., Ineson, Vicki, Wilmes, Nancy A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Bibliometrics
Citation analysis
Citations
Electronic publishing
Guidelines as Topic
Health Services Needs and Demand
Humans
Information Storage and Retrieval
Internet
Internet - organization & administration
Nursing
Nursing literature
Nursing Research - organization & administration
Periodicals as Topic - standards
Periodicals as Topic - statistics & numerical data
Reference linking
Time Factors
Web citation
Web sites
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
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Description
Summary:One problem with using Web citations is whether those documents will be available over time. We examined 573 Web citations in articles published in nursing journals and checked their availability (either by direct link or by searching the main site). There was a mean of 3.1 Web citations per article. Most Web citations were to documents that related to clinical practice, for example, clinical guidelines and explanations of clinical conditions and treatments. Of the 573 Web citations, 414 (72.3%) were still available; of those, 229 (55.3%) were able to be accessed by direct link and the other 185 (44.7%) by searching the main Web site. However, 159 (27.7%) of the references were not available, not even by searching the Internet using key terms from the citation. Considering that more than a fourth of the Web citations in this study were no longer available, authors need to be cautious about using the Web as a primary source of information for their publications.
ISSN:8755-7223
1532-8481
DOI:10.1016/j.profnurs.2007.12.004