  Purpose. In this study, we want to identify current possible causes for
citing and referencing errors in scholarly literature to compare if something
changed from the snapshot provided Sweetland in his 1989 paper.
Design/methodology/approach. We analysed reference elements, i.e. bibliographic
references, mentions, quotations, and respective in-text reference pointers,
from 729 articles published in 147 journals across the 27 subject areas.
Findings. The outcomes of our analysis pointed out that bibliographic errors
have been perpetuated for decades and that their possible causes have
increased, despite the encouraged use of technological facilities, i.e., the
reference managers. Originality. As far as we know, our study is the best
recent available analysis of errors in referencing and citing practices in the
literature since Sweetland (1989).
