In a discussion with an academic colleague of mine, the topic of references (in the sense of citations) came up. I’m always nit-picky about references and reference formatting, and I get cranky about bad references — particularly when a publication is under the gun to make a deadline. I haven’t always been; in fact, I’m quite sure I was a burden to my thesis advisor in this department on several occasions. My colleague asked why I care so much “on an initial submission” (as in a submission for review, rather than a camera-ready copy). I hadn’t really expressed my reasoning before, but I did, and here it is again.
It’s about professionalism and attention to detail. While every part of every publication should be correct, complete, and properly laid out, some parts are more important than others. Those parts are the parts that people who want to know what your work is about, and get a feel for whether they should care, are most likely to look at. That is: the abstract, introduction, conclusions, and references. Those four parts of any publication are going to be visited by more eyeballs than all of the painstaking work you presented in the parts in between. Those are also the parts that a reviewer is going to glance over first, before setting in her mind what she expects out of your paper and starting a serious review. It’s important to make a good first impression.
I don’t have any numbers (although I’d be surprised if they aren’t available for at least some fields), but I am thoroughly convinced that typos, errors of grammar, and formatting faux pas in the introduction of a paper are a quicker route to the chopping block than minor technical errors in the meat of the paper. They raise in the mind of the reviewer an image of a scientist who just didn’t care enough about his work to pay attention to the details of presentation. Typos and errors in the references aren’t quite as bad, but they’re right up there. In particular, a typo or error in a citation for a paper written by the reviewer could be quite the blunder.
I don’t get too fussy about citation styles. Various journals, conferences, professional societies, and whoever else specifies such things have different preferences for what each citation should look like. What I do get fussy about is internal consistency. If you use last names but first initials on some of your references and full first names on others, it looks sloppy. Same if you abbreviate venues aggressively in some entries and not others, or include conference location for only certain venues.
This is not to even get started on authors with names like “Märten”. That sort of copy-and-paste error is simply an abomination.
So … check your references. Don’t just check them to make sure they represent what you want to cite, as the saying is usually used, check them to make sure they look good, are consistent, and are typographically correct. I can’t promise it will lead to greater paper acceptance rates, but I can promise that there are people who will notice and appreciate it, and say to themselves, “She really has her ducks in a row.”