Does Pubmed accurately reflect the content of major plastic surgery journals?

摘要

The medical literature is an essential source of information for clinicians and researchers. Previous publications are most often found using electronic databases, the most popular of which is Pubmed. It is imperative that the database correctly reflects the content of the journals; this is especially important in bibliographic studies. We undertook a survey of four plastic surgery journals in order to detect whether and how often mistakes occur in the indexing process.The contents of the first issue of the years 1956, 1966, 1976, 1986, 1996 and 2006, if published, of: Annals of Plastic Surgery, the British Journal of Plastic Surgery/ Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, and the Scandinavian Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, were surveyed.The bibliographic data were retrieved from the Pubmed database and then compared with the paper version of the journals. All types of publications were included, except for book reviews and announcements.