Relevancia de las referencias bibliográficas en artículos de revistas médicas

bibliographic references are an important constituent of all scientific papers. the authors are responsible for their accuracy and they should follow the international requirements of style for references, adopted by the journal in which their paper is going to be submitted. revista chilena de enfermedades respiratorias follows the "uniform requirements" established by the vancouver group of medical editors. authors should do a suitable selection of references, providing direct citations to original research sources, close related to the content of the paper. the most common errors in reference list are: a) an excessive number of irrelevant citations; b) the omission of important articles; c) a wrong claim of priority in reporting an outcome. it is recommended avoid using abstracts as references, unless they have been published in the last three years. the use of electronic references should indicate: "available in", web site and the access date. international visibility of local journals from developing countries can be improved by including as references previous reports published in these national journals.