Creating and managing references

1. Creating references

Citing is a legal way of using source authored by someone else in your own paper and provides your readers with all data necessary to find this source. Always remember that referring to other documents is essential part of conducting research and that without proper citing, you will be accused of plagiarism - the unacknowledged use of words and ideas of others.

The citation style used at the Pomeranian Medical University is based on Vancouver style. Vancouver is a numbered referencing style used commonly in medicine and science which consists of a proper citation indicated as a number in the text and a numbered reference list at the end of the document, where full details of a corresponding publications are shown.

A number referring to a citation should be placed at the end of a cited sentence like in the example below:

…with more than 90% mortality rate if untreated [3].

Citations are numbered consecutively in the order in which they appear in the document. Because each number is attributed to a publication, if it is cited more than once, the same number should be used.

A numbered list of references should be provided at the end of the document with all necessary bibliographic data. The information needed to include a correct reference can differ depending on source type. Below you may find general data scheme with punctuation and example references for three most common publication types cited in medicine – journal articles, books and book chapters.

You may get further information in an official Citing Medicine style guide available here or review examples for all publication types here.  

2. Example references (PMU Vancouver)

Journal article:

Authors. Title: subtitle. Journal title. Year;Volume(Issue):Pages.

[4] Haboub M, Drighil A. Successful balloon valvuloplasty of a subpulmonic membrane associated with cor triatriatum dexter: a case report. Journal of Medical Case Reports. 2019;13(1):291.

Book:

Authors. Title: subtitle. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher; Publication year.

[21] Frink RJ. Inflammatory atherosclerosis: characteristics of the injurious agent. Sacramento: Heart Research Foundation; 2002.

Book chapter with chapter authors:

Chapter authors. Chapter title: chapter subtitle. In: Book authors. Book title: book subtitle. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher; Publication year.

[6] Simpson EL, Leung DM, Eichenfield LF, Boguniewicz M. Atopic Dermatitis. In: Kang S, Amagai M, Bruckner AL, Enk AH, Margolis DJ, McMichael AJ, Orringer JS, ed. Fitzpatrick's Dermatology. 9th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; 2019.

Book chapter without chapter authors:

Authors. Title: subtitle. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher; Publication year. Part name, Chapter title; Chapter pages.

[1] Riffenburgh RH. Statistics in medicine. 2nd ed. Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press; 2006. Chapter 24, Regression and correlation methods; p. 447-86.

3. Managing references

You may easily manage your references using one of the reference management programs. Generally all citation managers offer a similar set of features making citing and creating reference lists for your papers as fast and simple as possible. Using them you may:

• collect and store your references in your own library,
• attach PDFs to references,
• generate citations and reference lists in your DOC or other format documents,
• refine collected data,
• sync references across all your devices.

The library promotes and offers help for Mendeley citation manager, but you may of course freely choose the software which best suits your needs. You may find the majority of available reference managers using detailed list provided by Wikipedia.

You may get all information about Mendeley and its corresponding apps download and usage here.

Keep in mind that every citation manager is only a tool and, when operating on incorrect data, may return incorrect reference. Always make sure the information you are collecting or adding manually is accurate and publication type format relates to actual publication type.