PurposeIn this study, the authors want to identify current possible causes for citing and referencing errors in scholarly literature to compare if something changed from the snapshot provided by Sweetland in his 1989 paper.Design/methodology/approachThe authors 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.FindingsThe outcomes of the 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/valueAs far as the authors know, the study is the best recent available analysis of errors in referencing and citing practices in the literature since Sweetland (1989).