ReviewResearch integrity and peer review2026
A scoping review of guides and advice for scholarly citing in health research.
Review in Research integrity and peer review, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo identify, summarise and analyse documents with guides and advice for scholarly citing in health research.
methodsIn a scoping review, we included documents with guides and advice for scholarly citing in health research. We searched in Embase (Ovid), Google Scholar, 20 textbooks, 30 journal websites, and conducted supplementary searches. We categorised original documents as guides if their primary focus was on scholarly citing and if they contained a list of advice. We summarised the guides and pieces of advice, analysed the pieces of advice, and listed illustrative quotes.
resultsWe screened 9.746 documents for eligibility and included 118. The documents were published in 1934-2025, and the guides and advice were primarily identified in journal articles (63 out of 118 documents, 53%) and on websites (42 out of 118 documents, 36%). We identified 12 guides and 75 unique pieces of advice (e.g., "read the papers you cite"). The 12 guides were developed with a simple pragmatic approach, i.e., no systematic literature review of previous studies, and only one guide included a survey as a supporting study. The various pieces of advice were related to seven categories that researchers could reflect on while citing: 1) quality, 2) context, 3) when to cite, 4) integrity, 5) originality, 6) transparency, and 7) availability.
conclusionWe identified 12 guides and 75 unique pieces of advice for scholarly citing in health research. Our review may serve as a resource for authors of health research publications and as part of the development process for a comprehensive guideline for adequate citation practice in health research.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.