Brain mutated into “brian”: a cross-platform analysis of a common typographical error in neuroscience publications

Abstract Typographical errors in scientific literature can compromise discoverability, distort bibliometric analyses, and undermine the integrity of scholarly communication. This study investigates the prevalence and consistency of a specific typographical error, “brian” in place of “brain,” across neuroscience and neuroimaging publications indexed in Web of Science and Scopus. A total of 96 articles and reviews published between 1971 and 2025 with this error were identified through targeted database queries and screened for the occurrence of this error in titles, abstracts, keywords, and full texts. Manual coding was performed across four sources: Web of Science, Scopus, publisher websites, and publisher PDFs. The abstract field exhibited the highest error prevalence, with 54.2% of papers affected in Web of Science and 40.6% in Scopus. Cohen’s Kappa analysis revealed variable inter-platform agreement, with perfect agreement in the keywords field between Web of Science and publisher PDFs ( κ = 1.0), but poor agreement in abstracts ( κ = 0.318). Scopus had better agreement than Web of Science for the title and abstract fields. Temporal analysis showed that publications from 1993 onward were significantly more likely to exhibit consistent errors across platforms ( χ 2 = 29.1, p < 0.001). These findings suggest improvements in digital publishing workflows over time, but also highlight persistent vulnerabilities in metadata curation. The study underscores the need for enhanced editorial oversight and cross-platform validation to ensure the accuracy of scientific records. While focused on a single error, the methodology offers a framework for broader investigations into typographical integrity in academic publishing.