How to Navigate Citations and Referencing

What is a citation?

A citation, and its corresponding reference, is the fundamental method of “acknowledging ideas”, facts, arguments, concepts and statements “derived from other sources” (Bahadoran 2020) in science, and academia in general. Citations are essentially a means by which readers are guided to the original source of information.

Without citations, the requirement to repeat results and discussion points from primary sources to support the arguments in your manuscript would be overwhelming and impractical. It is also good ethical, scientific practice to cite others’ work appropriately and accurately.

What does a citation look like?

There are dozens of citation styles. Most commonly in the medical literature, citations are presented as numbers, either superscript or in parentheses, embedded within the text at the relevant location. Citations can also be of the “author-year” type, as I have listed above with Bahadoran 2020.

The citation leads to a reference, usually listed in numerical order at the end of the manuscript (or other type of scientific document). The reference contains the bibliographical details of the original source. For example, earlier on this page, I cited Bahadoran 2020. Here is the reference for this article:

Bahadoran Z, Mirmiran P, Kashfi K, Ghasemi A. The Principles of Biomedical Scientific Writing: Citation.Int J Endocrinol Metab. 2020;18(2):e102622. Published 2020 Apr 27. doi:10.5812/ijem.102622

This reference is in the American Medical Association format, which is used by all the journals that belong to this Association. Other journals have different formats.

How can I add citations to my manuscript?

Citations and referencing can be performed manually, but this is strongly discouraged as it is a massive time sink and prone to errors. I recommend the use of citation software. The most commonly used citation software programs are: EndNote (https://endnote.com), Zotero (https://zotero.org) and Mendeley (https://www.mendeley.com/)

However, there are a vast number of different programs and apps available. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software. I personally use Zotero because it is free, has a desktop app as well as web-based access, and most importantly, is easy and intuitive to use. Many universities and healthcare organisations offer a free subscription to Endnote for their employees and students, so Endnote is very commonly used.

Regardless of the particular software you end up using, adding citations to your manuscript follows a similar, common pathway.

Items, such as published papers, can be added to your Mendeley/Endnote/Zotero library through a variety of different techniques listed here: https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero
https://www.mendeley.com/guides/desktop/02-adding-documents
https://libguides.scu.edu.au/endnote/manual

If you find an interesting paper in PubMed, or something you are likely to cite at a later date, then you should save the citation. Here is a simple guide: https://guides.lib.uw.edu/hsl/pubmed/cite

Endnote, Zotero and Mendeley (and others) have plug-ins for Microsoft Word. It is simply a matter of clicking on “Add citation” in the plugin (located on the quick access toolbar in Word, searching for the citation you want to reference (usually by typing the author name or other bibliographical details), and clicking done. Details for the process in Zotero can be found here: https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage with other citation software also offering similar guides.

At the end of your document, in the References section, you can simply click “Add bibliography” and your reference list will be populated.

Within your plugin, you can also select the appropriate journal style. If your required journal style is not available, it can be downloaded. See here: https://www.zotero.org/support/styles
https://endnote.com/downloads/styles/
https://csl.mendeley.com/about/

One other incredibly useful feature of citation software is that they allow to organise your saved citations into separate folders. For example, I might organise my citations by organ system (cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological and so forth), or by research project (“Impact of frailty on outcomes after severe trauma”, “Survey of ICU workforce wellbeing” etc), or any other categorisation I want. This makes it much easier to go back and find particular papers, for reading or for citation.

Summary

References and Resources

  1. Bahadoran Z, Mirmiran P, Kashfi K, Ghasemi A. The Principles of Biomedical Scientific Writing: Citation. Int J Endocrinol Metab. 2020;18(2):e102622. Published 2020 Apr 27. doi:10.5812/ijem.102622
  2. Endnote: https://endnote.com/
  3. Mendeley: https://www.mendeley.com/
  4. Zotero: https://www.zotero.org/

Section Author

Dr Mahesh Ramanan
Mahesh is a QLD-based Intensivist with an interest in clinical trials, ICU databases and research education. He is a cricket tragic and his passion for gardening far outstrips the amount of time he actually spends in his garden.

Section Reviewer

Dr Linda Guo
Linda is an intensive care senior registrar currently working at the Princess Alexandra Hospital. Her interests include intensive care research, physician welfare, the Lucky Paws Dog Rescue Facebook page and funk music; however, the impact of Part 2 study on her Spotify Wrapped this year was both statistically and clinically significant.
©2022- Dr Kerina Denny