摘要：Reference citations in scholarly publishing are critical, providing measurability and discoverability. The problem is that reference quality and accuracy have been known weaknesses in scholarly publishing for many years. Most academic authors understandably pay more attention to their ideas than to their references. As a result, many references are inconsistent, incomplete, poorly structured, or just plain wrong. Perhaps at one time publishers might have assumed that informed readers (or their graduate students) encountering faulty references might dig deeper to find the cited works, but today we entrust computers to make the links. Despite continuing advances in reference-matching technology, for the most part reference-link quality reflects the expression “garbage in, garbage out.” This article looks at the importance of reference citations, the common problems, and the steps publishers are taking to solve them.
