University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

Browsing Mendeley I found the following record:
<http://www.mendeley.com/research/description-larva/>. This URL is for a
paper  

> Costa, J. M., & Santos, T. C. (2008). Description of the larva of.
> Zootaxa, 99(2), 129-131

which apparently has the DOI
[doi:10.1645/GE-2580.1](http://dx.doi.org/10.1645/GE-2580.1). This is
strange because *Zootaxa* doesn\'t have DOIs. The DOI given resolves to
a paper in the *Journal of Parasitology*:  

> Harriman, V. B., Galloway, T. D., Alisauskas, R. T., & Wobeser, G. A.
> (2011). Description of the larva of Ceratophyllus vagabundus
> vagabundus (Siphonaptera: Ceratophyllidae) from nests of Rossʼs and
> lesser snow geese in Nunavut, Canada. The Journal of parasitology,
> 93(2), 197-200

Now, this paper has it\'s [own record in
Mendeley](http://www.mendeley.com/research/description-larva-ceratophyllus-vagabundus-vagabundus-siphonaptera-ceratophyllidae-nests-rosss-lesser-snow-geese-nunavut-canada/).  
  
OK, so this is weird\..., but it gets weirder. If you look at the
Mendeley page for this chimeric article there is a PDF preview of yet
another article:  

> LOPES, Maria José Nascimento; FROEHLICH, Claudio Gilberto and
> DOMINGUEZ, Eduardo (2003). Description of the larva of Thraulodes
> schlingeri (Ephemeroptera, Leptophlebiidae). Iheringia, Sér. Zool.
> 92(2), 197-200 2003
> [doi:10.1590/S0073-47212003000200011](http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0073-47212003000200011)

![Mendeley
duplicate](http://lh3.ggpht.com/--a2sSrAiZaM/Tm_BEaEmW1I/AAAAAAAAA_A/yn28RlwZeBU/mendeley_duplicate.png?imgmax=800 "mendeley_duplicate.png"){style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;"
border="0" width="400" height="211"}  
  
But it gets even more interesting. The abstract for the phantom
*Zootaxa* article belongs to yet another paper:  

> Marques, K. I. D. S., & Xerez, R. D.Description of the larva of
> Popanomyia kerteszi James & Woodley (Diptera: Stratiomyidae) and
> identification key to immature stages of Pachygastrinae. Neotropical
> Entomology, 38(5), 643-648.

which also [exists in
Mendeley](http://www.mendeley.com/research/description-larva-popanomyia-kerteszi-james-woodley-diptera-stratiomyidae-identification-key-immature-stages-pachygastrinae-13/).  
  
To investigate further I used Mendeley\'s API to retrieve this record (I
had to look at the source of the web page to find the internal
identifier used by Mendeley, namely
**010c48d0-edb5-11df-99a6-0024e8453de6** to do this, why does Mendeley
hide these?). Here\'s the abbreviated JSON for this record.  

``` {style="font-size:10px;border:1px solid rgb(192,192,192);background-color:rgb(240,240,240);"}
{
  ...
  "website": "http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/21506868",
  "identifiers": {
    "pmid": "21506868",
    "issn": "19372345",
    "doi": "10.1645\/GE-2580.1"
  },
  ...
  "issue": "2",
  "pages": "129-131",
  "public_file_hash": "fe7eed3f6c43a3be1480a0937229b9ad33666df4",
  "publication_outlet": "Zootaxa",
  "type": "Journal Article",
  "mendeley_url": "http:\/\/www.mendeley.com\/research\/description-larva\/",
  "uuid": "010c48d0-edb5-11df-99a6-0024e8453de6",
  "authors": [
    {
      "forename": "J M",
      "surname": "Costa"
    },
    {
      "forename": "T C",
      "surname": "Santos"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Description of the larva of",
  "volume": "99",
  "year": 2008,
  "categories": [
    39,
    203,
    37,
    52,
    43,
    40,
    210
  ],
  "oa_journal": false
}
```

  
Doesn\'t add much to the story, but does give us the
[sha1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1) for the PDF for the chimeric
article (**fe7eed3f6c43a3be1480a0937229b9ad33666df4**). If I download
the PDF for the article in *Iheringia, Sér. Zool.* it has the same
sha1:  

``` {style="font-size:10px;border:1px solid rgb(192,192,192);background-color:rgb(240,240,240);"}

openssl sha1 a11v93n2.pdf 
SHA1(a11v93n2.pdf)= fe7eed3f6c43a3be1480a0937229b9ad33666df4
```

**This article doesn\'t exist**  
So, to summarise, this paper doesn\'t exist. It is credited to a journal
that doesn\'t have DOIs, the DOI resolves to an article in a different
journal, the abstract comes from another article in another journal, and
the PDF is from a third article. OMG!  
  
**This is just weird**  
So, something about the way Mendeley merges references is broken.
Merging references is a tough problem so there will always be cases
where things go wrong. But it would be really, really helpful if
Mendeley could display the set of articles that it has merged to create
each canonical reference (say by listing the UUIDs for each article).
Users could then see if badness had happened, and provide feedback, for
example by highlighting references that are clearly the same, and those
that are clearly different. Until this happens I\'m a bit nervous about
trusting Mendeley with my bibliographic data, I don\'t want it mangled
into chimeric papers that don\'t exist.  
  


Browsing Mendeley I found the following record: http://www.mendeley.com/research/description-larva/. This URL is for a paper  which apparently has the DOI doi:10.1645/GE-2580.1. This is strange because
<em>
 Zootaxa
</em>
doesn't have DOIs. The DOI given resolves to a paper in the
<em>
 Journal of Parasitology
</em>
:  Now, this paper has it's own record in Mendeley. OK, so this is weird..., but it gets weirder.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Phantom articles: why Mendeley needs to make duplication transparent