Spelling errors in health and medical abstracts: An observational analysis from 2008 to 2024

Background: The pervasive mantra to “publish or perish” means that some researchers prioritise quantity over quality. In a rush to obtain papers, researchers neglect to thoroughly check their writing. Spelling errors are a sign of rushed practice, and hence a potential indicator of poor research quality. Objective: To examine spelling errors in published abstracts and estimate the trend over time and potential predictors of errors. Methods: We used an observational study of the health and medical literature available on PubMed and OpenAlex between 2008 and 2024. We searched titles and abstracts for a list of more than 4,000 common spelling errors used by Wikipedia. As a comparison group, we randomly selected control abstracts that did not have errors. We used regression to examine predictors of spelling errors and whether papers with more spelling errors had fewer citations. Results: We detected 48,420 spelling errors in more than 21 million abstracts. The trend in error rates increased slightly until 2016, after which it decreased. Papers with more authors had fewer errors on average. There were large differences in spelling error rates according to the first author’s country and the publisher. Abstracts with two spelling errors had an estimated 8% reduction in citations compared to abstracts without errors. Conclusions: Spelling errors did not increase consistently during the study period, providing no evidence of a general worsening in research quality. The recent reduction in spelling error rates could be due to an increased use of large language models in paper writing. Abstracts with spelling errors had fewer citations, indicating a link between spelling errors and overall research quality.