Researchers have counted students' referencing mistakes in first-year essays, master's theses and medical doctorates, and the findings are steady. Most entries that go wrong go wrong in their details, online sources are often cited as if they were web pages, and much source use happens one sentence at a time, close to the source's words. The same studies suggest these are mostly mistakes of skill, not attempts to cheat.
EdCitation publishes this roundup. For every study we give who was studied, how, what was found and where the method stops, each figure read in the paper on 27 September 2026. What a marker's comment means is in why did I lose marks for referencing; this page is the evidence behind it. To test your own list for the same faults, EdCitation's free Verify references compares each entry with the record its publisher registered.
What referencing mistakes do students make most often?
The studies find three families of mistake, each with its own fix.
- Wrong details in the entry: authors, dates, capitals, italics, volume, issue, retrieval details. Van Note Chism and Weerakoon (2012) found doctoral students averaged 1.8 errors per entry in their own literature reviews.
- The wrong kind of source. Greer and McCann (2018) found undergraduates named an online source's type correctly 53% of the time, usually falling back on the format for a website.
- Thin use of the source. In the Citation Project, 46.3% of 1,911 student citations came from a source's first page, and more than half the sources were cited once (Jamieson, 2013).
Underneath all three, students tend to think they reference better than tests show (Newton, 2016).
The studies, in one table
Oldest first. The limit is the weakness the authors name, or the one their design imposes.
| Study | Who and what | What it found | Limit | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roig (1999) | Undergraduates paraphrasing a two-sentence paragraph, two studies | 41% to 68% kept five-word strings from a journal passage; 9% to 19% from an easier textbook one | A set task, not real papers | DOI |
| Pecorari (2003) | 17 postgraduate second-language writers' texts against their sources, plus interviews | Features that could be called plagiarism, with strong signs of no intent | 17 writers; abstract read | DOI |
| Howard et al. (2010) | 18 first-year research papers, one US university | No summary of any source | One site | DOI |
| Van Note Chism and Weerakoon (2012) | 12 students in one doctoral course, APA 6th edition | 40% of planted errors found on average; 1.8 errors per entry in their own lists | 12 students | Journal |
| Citation Project (Jamieson, 2013; Jamieson & Howard, 2014) | 1,911 citations in 174 first-year papers, 16 US institutions | 46.3% of citations to page 1; 56.5% of sources cited once; 19.0% of papers had copied words without quotation marks | Pages 2 to 6 of each paper only | DOI |
| Azadeh and Vaez (2013) | 704 article references in PhD theses, two Iranian medical universities, Vancouver | 300 free of error; 34 fully in Vancouver style | Abstract read; its percentages do not match its counts | DOI |
| Greenwood et al. (2014) | Survey sent to 1,000 postgraduate nursing students | Half blamed Internet sources or losing track; 50% used no referencing resources | Self-report; responses not stated in the abstract | DOI |
| Newton (2016) | New students at one UK university, questionnaire | Confident about plagiarism, poor at simple referencing tests | Abstract read | DOI |
| Greer and McCann (2018) | 63 undergraduates at one US university citing five online sources | Type right 53% of the time; 27% of citations correct | A survey task; APA 6th edition | DOI |
| Yap (2020) | 20 master's theses in education, Kazakhstan, 1,432 references | 850 errors; 14% to 100% errors per reference by thesis | One department; APA 6th edition | Journal |
| Scheinfeld et al. (2025) | Review of 32 studies of APA reference accuracy | 13 used student papers; 64 different accuracy measures | APA and English only | DOI |
What did each study find?
Read each method before comparing numbers: the studies count different things.
Mistakes in the reference entries
Yap (2020) read every reference in 20 master's theses in education from one university in Kazakhstan, theses the author describes as the best of their cohort. The 1,432 references held at least 850 errors; errors per reference ran from 14% in one thesis to 100% in two. Most fell in the retrieval details, such as a missing place of publication, volume or issue. The commonest single fault was capital letters left in titles, which Yap puts down to cite tools used without a check. The average rose from 31.22 errors per thesis in the earlier cohort to 42.5, despite a new thesis manual.
Van Note Chism and Weerakoon (2012) followed 12 students in a doctoral seminar. Given a 26-entry list with 61 planted errors, they fixed between 20% and 64%, averaging 40%. Their own literature review lists averaged 1.8 errors per entry. The same faults recurred: the kind of source, punctuation between authors, month and year order, capitals and italics in titles. Little carried over from one task to the next.
Medicine shows the same pattern in a numbered style. Azadeh and Vaez (2013) checked authors, article title, journal title, year, volume and pages in 704 article references from PhD theses at the Tehran and Tabriz universities of medical sciences. Only 164 of 357 at Tehran and 136 of 347 at Tabriz had no error, and 34 followed Vancouver style completely, all at Tehran. The abstract's error rates, 62% and 53%, do not match those counts (about 54% and 61%), and we could not open the full text. By either reading, more than half were wrong somewhere.
Online sources cited as websites
Greer and McCann (2018) asked 63 undergraduates to cite two e-books, two journal articles and a web page in APA. They named the kind of source correctly 53% of the time, and 27% of citations were correct. For the first e-book, 28 students used the website format and none the e-book one. Some answers, the authors judged, carried faults copied from the library database's citation tool.
Using a source a sentence at a time
The Citation Project coded every citation on pages 2 to 6 of 174 first-year papers from 16 US institutions: 1,911 citations of 930 sources, each source retrieved and the cited page noted. Jamieson (2013) reports 46.3% of citations came from the first page, 77.4% from the first three and 9.4% from page 8 or later, whatever the source's length, and 56.5% of sources were cited once. The data sheet adds that 33 of the 174 papers (19.0%) copied words with a citation but no quotation marks, and 91 (52.3%) contained patchwriting (Jamieson & Howard, 2014). How often students quoted is in too many quotations.
Howard et al. (2010), the pilot at one university, found none of 18 papers summarised a source. The students paraphrased, copied or patchwrote from single sentences, which keeps a writer close to the source's wording and never requires grasping the whole.
Paraphrase and patchwriting
Patchwriting is restating a passage while staying close to its words or syntax. Roig (1999) asked undergraduates to paraphrase two sentences from a journal article: 41% to 68% of the results kept a string of five or more of its words, and 52% distorted its meaning. From an easier textbook paragraph, only 9% to 19% did, though distortion stayed near 50%. Roig suggests some plagiarism comes from struggling with hard, unfamiliar text. Pecorari (2003) compared 17 postgraduate second-language writers' texts with their sources and interviewed writers and supervisors: the writing had features that could be called plagiarism, while the evidence strongly suggested no intention to plagiarise.
Why do students get referencing wrong?
Skill and habit, far more than dishonesty. Greenwood et al. (2014) found postgraduate nursing students understood what referencing required, but half blamed their poor referencing on Internet sources or on losing track of where material came from, and many lacked confidence in key tasks; the authors conclude incorrect referencing is rarely intentional. Newton (2016) found new undergraduates at a UK university confident about plagiarism yet poor at simple referencing tests; the more confident did better, and new postgraduates did better still.
Two causes recur. Tools copy faults in, as Yap (2020) and Greer and McCann (2018) both suspected; how free generators score is in the best free APA citation generators, tested. And citations that never pass a long source's first pages may mean it was not read, the problem citing a source you did not read deals with.
Where do the studies disagree?
On three points, each of which changes what the numbers mean.
How big the problem is
The error figures cannot be set side by side. Yap (2020) divides errors by references, so one entry with three faults counts three times; Azadeh and Vaez (2013) count references with any error; Van Note Chism and Weerakoon (2012) count errors per entry. Scheinfeld et al. (2025) found 64 measures across 32 studies and no agreed method.
Whether tools help or hurt
Yap (2020) blames cite tools for capitals in titles, and Greer and McCann (2018) suspected database errors in students' answers. Van Note Chism and Weerakoon (2012) found no link between how students used the Internet and how well they did, though students who used the APA manual itself tended to do better.
Whether students summarise at all
Howard et al. (2010) found no summary in 18 papers; the Citation Project found it in 6.3% of citations and 40.8% of papers. Jamieson (2013) notes the pilot was a single-institution study. Both agree summary is rare.
What happened when we ran two faulty references through Verify references?
We wrote a short list of our own, with typical student mistakes in two real references, and on 27 September 2026 ran it through EdCitation's Verify references.
| Our entry | The mistake we made | Shown as | Reason, as returned |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roig (1999) | Year given as 1998, DOI kept | Doubtful ("check this") | "The work was published in 1999, not 1998; the record has no date in 1998." |
| Howard et al. (2010) | Title given as "Writing from sentences: Students writing from sources", no DOI | Doubtful ("check this") | "A published record has these words in another order: "Writing from Sources, Writing from Sentences". Check it is the one meant, and copy the title from it." |
| Greer and McCann (2018) | None | Verified | "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches." |
The counts: 1 verified, 2 doubtful, 0 not found, 0 retracted, 0 unchecked. The wrong year was caught, with the right one. The mangled title was caught too: we had built it from the same words in another order, the reason quoted the real title, and the APA entry built from the record read "Writing from sources, writing from sentences." When we changed words instead, giving Greer and McCann's title as "Everything online is a website: Format confusion in student referencing" with no DOI, it came back doubtful: "The closest published record differs in its title. Check it is the one meant, and copy the title from it."
The entry built for Greer and McCann named only the first author, because the registered record names only one; the article's first page names both. Read every entry against the paper before it goes in.
Which EdCitation tool checks for the mistakes the studies found?
For the faults these studies count most, Verify references is the best tool, because they sit in the details a publisher's record holds: authors, year, title, journal, volume, pages. It looks each entry up in that record, never writes one, and says what differs, as it did with Roig's year. It is free with no account. An entry it could not check is labelled that way, never "not found"; retracted papers are flagged, and where an entry lists every author, a person the record names and the entry leaves out is reported. Given the whole paper instead of a list, it also pairs each in-text citation with its entry, and each entry with a citation in the text.
References from a file, in Pro at $8 a month, reads the reference list out of your uploaded paper, checks each entry, and pairs citations and entries in both directions, pointing out a source cited but not listed, or listed and never cited. Pro also has Mechanics QA for formatting against the style, and Check plagiarism, which marks passages matching published or web text with each source: the place to catch the unmarked copying the Citation Project found.
EdCitation never writes any part of a paper, and here that is the point: the studies show the real skill is reading and restating a source, and that stays yours. EdCitation finds, cites and verifies the sources around it.
How do I check my references for these mistakes before submitting?
Take the commonest faults in turn.
- Run the whole list through Verify references. It catches wrong years, titles, words in the wrong order and missing authors against the record.
- Name the kind of every online source: journal article, e-book, report or web page. Greer and McCann's students got this wrong about half the time.
- Rebuild faulty entries from the record. Give Cite a source the DOI or ISBN, then check capitals and italics against common APA 7 formatting mistakes.
- Match citations to the list both ways, with the whole paper in Verify references or References from a file; the fixes are in in-text citations that do not match the reference list.
- Look at where each citation comes from. If every citation of a long source is from its first page or abstract, read further, or cite only what you read.
- Read each paraphrase against its source. The source's words, or its sentence shape with synonyms swapped in, is patchwriting: rewrite from understanding or quote, as paraphrase, quote or summarise shows.
Quick questions
What are the most common referencing mistakes students make?
Wrong details in the entry (authors, dates, capitals, volume, retrieval information), online sources cited as websites, and citations that do not match the list. Yap (2020) found most errors in retrieval details.
Are student referencing errors usually deliberate?
The studies suggest not. Pecorari (2003) found strong signs of no intent to plagiarise, and Greenwood et al. (2014) concluded poor referencing mostly comes from a gap in skills.
What is the Citation Project?
The Citation Project is a US study of how students use sources, led by Sandra Jamieson and Rebecca Moore Howard. Its second study coded 1,911 citations in 174 first-year research papers from 16 colleges and universities.
Do citation generators cause referencing errors?
Some studies suspect so: Yap (2020) linked capitals left in titles to cite tools, and Greer and McCann (2018) saw database faults in students' citations. Check every generated entry against the source.
Can I check my references for mistakes for free?
Yes. EdCitation's Verify references compares every entry with the publisher's record, free with no account, and says what differs.
References
- Azadeh, F., & Vaez, R. (2013). The accuracy of references in PhD theses: A case study. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 30(3), 232–240. https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12026
- Greenwood, M., Walkem, K., Smith, L. M., Shearer, T., & Stirling, C. (2014). Postgraduate nursing student knowledge, attitudes, skills, and confidence in appropriately referencing academic work. Journal of Nursing Education, 53(8), 447–452. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20140725-01
- Greer, K., & McCann, S. (2018). Everything online is a website: Information format confusion in student citation behaviors. Communications in Information Literacy, 12(2), 150–165. https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2018.12.2.6
- Howard, R. M., Serviss, T., & Rodrigue, T. K. (2010). Writing from sources, writing from sentences. Writing & Pedagogy, 2(2), 177–192. https://doi.org/10.1558/wap.v2i2.177
- Jamieson, S. (2013). Reading and engaging sources: What students' use of sources reveals about advanced reading skills. Across the Disciplines, 10(4), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.37514/ATD-J.2013.10.4.15
- Jamieson, S., & Howard, R. M. (2014). Writing from sources: Information selection, use, and citation in undergraduate research papers from sixteen US colleges and universities [Data sheet]. The Citation Project. http://www.citationproject.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/CitationProject-Writing_From_Sources-Data-2014.pdf
- Newton, P. (2016). Academic integrity: A quantitative study of confidence and understanding in students at the start of their higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41(3), 482–497. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1024199
- Pecorari, D. (2003). Good and original: Plagiarism and patchwriting in academic second-language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12(4), 317–345. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2003.08.004
- Roig, M. (1999). When college students' attempts at paraphrasing become instances of potential plagiarism. Psychological Reports, 84(3), 973–982. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1999.84.3.973
- Scheinfeld, L., Chung, S., Fena, C., Tran, C., Kretz, C., & Reisman, M. R. (2025). Assessing formatting accuracy of APA Style references: A scoping review. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 20(4), 159–191. https://doi.org/10.18438/eblip30800
- Van Note Chism, N., & Weerakoon, S. (2012). APA, meet Google: Graduate students' approaches to learning citation style. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 12(2), 27–38. https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/josotl/article/view/2020
- Yap, J. M. (2020). Common referencing errors committed by graduate students in education. Library Philosophy and Practice, Article 4039. https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/libphilprac/4039/