citations - Should I cite author names as they appear in the journal or as I know them to be complete?

Since I've been using Mendeley to manage and extract metadata from my PDFs, I've come to notice that authors are sometimes denoted with all their initials and sometimes with just one. I assume this has to do with different journal's rules on denoting author's names. However, this makes a mess in my author list in Mendeley, as the same person may be known under two or even more names (e.g.: "Last, F."; "Last, First"; "Last, First M,"; "Last, First Middle").

If, for completeness' and tidyness' sake, I edit the author fields to always have the most complete name of the author available to me regardless the journal the author published in, I inevitably will change the way I cite them. For example, an article from a certain journal only uses the first initial:

Last, F. Article Title, Journal name, x:y (YYYY), pp. xxx-xxx

After I have "updated" my authors, it is possible my citation includes also the second initial, i.e.:

Last, F.M., Article Title, Journal name, x:y (YYYY), pp. xxx-xxx

So my question is: am I incorrectly citing the article when I include more complete information about the author's name than is given by the journal article itself?

Answer

I can see your problem but I am afraid you will have to live with the mess. The reason is that a publication must be referenced exactly the way it is published. The exception is that it is permissible to abbreviate first names to initials to adhere to the standard of the publication in which you intend to publish. It is, however, not allowed to remove middle names (initials) if they are part of the original publication, nor to add initials if they were not part of the original. I know many authors who have published under one and two initials randomly, but there is not much one can do about it.

Now, if you do it in your reference program, there is nothing wrong with that, but you need to make sure your changes do not migrate into published work that you write.

Just an example, Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Manuscript Preparation and Submission: Preparing a Manuscript for Submission to a Biomedical Journal states:

Some but not all journals check the accuracy of all reference citations; thus, citation errors sometimes appear in the published version of articles. To minimize such errors, references should be verified using either an electronic bibliographic source, such as PubMed or print copies from original sources. [The text then goes on to discuss retracted articles.]