The view of Czech biomedical journals editors on the citation rules: a pilot study
Vol.13,No.2(2021)
Purpose – The cause of the existence of various citation styles has been discussed for more than 40 years. This pilot study aimed to examine Czech biomedical journals and their editors to find what citation style is recommended and editors’ bibliographic references and citation methods preferences.
Design/Methodology/Approach – The research sample consisted of 185 Czech biomedical journals. Expert analysis was applied to identify citation styles used by the journals and a structure of bibliographic references. Then 185 editors were asked to fill a survey on reasons for using different citation styles than AMA, Vancouver/NLM or Uniform requirements and how important data is in bibliographic references of articles, books/chapters in books and websites. They were also asked for their citation method preferences.
Results – From the 185 periodicals, AMA, NLM/Vancouver or Uniform requirements are used by 16 journals and in some modified form by 34 journals. From the 185 editors, 37 replied to the first part of the questionnaire on citation data and 31 on citation methods. According to them, authors, the title of the article/chapter, the title of the journal/book and the year of publication are the most important data in bibliographic references. However, a quarter or more respondents do not consider other data in references to be important and editors prefer citation-sequence as a citation method. Comparing the editors' opinion and the examples of references in their journals showed that none of the journals' reference data comply with the editor's opinion.
Originality/Value – Formerly published studies declared a different need of authors and publishers as the main reason for using various citation styles instead of the standardized one. This pilot study brings a new view on Czech biomedical journal customs concerning references and suggests drawing attention to the fact that standardized styles may insufficiently reflect real practice in scientific publishing.
bibliographic references; citation; citation rules; citation styles; Czech biomedical journals; editors
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