Physiopedia uses the Vancouver style of referencing as this is the style used in most leading medical journals. When, in your work, you have used an idea from a book, journal article, etc. you must acknowledge this in your text. This is referred to as ‘citing’. Each piece of work which is cited in your text should have a unique number, assigned in the order of citation. If, in your text, you cite a piece of work more than once, the same citation number should be used.
To cite a piece of work in Physiopedia follow these instructions:
- At the point where you wish to cite a piece of work, click on <R> in the toolbar of the editing box.
- A new editing box will pop-up on your screen.
- In this box you should write the reference in the ‘reference text’ box. Please use the Vancouver style of referencing.
- Then add a reference name. This could be ‘Smith and Jones’ or ‘Smith et al’ for example.
- Then click OK.
- Once you save the page that you are editing the reference for your cited piece of work will automatically appear at the bottom of the page.
If you wish to cite peice of work more than once on the same page:
- Complete the steps above for the first citation of that piece of work. When you come to cite the same piece of work again click on <R> in the toolbar again for the pop-up editing box to appear, but this time you need only fill in the reference name. This should be the same name that you gave to the reference the first time you cited it.
- If you do not know the name that has been given to the reference, for example if someone else added it, you can find it in the wikitext. Click on the wikitext link in the toolbar of the editing box. Look in the wikitext for the reference that you wish to cite for a second (or multiple) time. It should start with <ref name=”reference name”> where “reference name” is the name that you are looking for.
- If it does not have a reference name i.e. it just starts with <ref> and ends with </ref> you can add a reference name yourself by adding name=”reference name” inside the first <ref> tag so that it looks like this <ref name=”reference name”>.
For further explanation and more on Vancouver Referencing have a look at the Adding References user tutorial.