#10: What about referencing?

I’ve not mentioned in the last post about citing references in your write-up, but it is definitely an essential part in the manuscript even before you hand it over to your editor for copyediting.

Why referencing?
When a speaker makes a presentation or delivers a lecture, he is basically presenting a compilation of data and information (e.g. results from clinical studies, statistics from a global survey, and others) extracted from various sources. The sources - which include papers published in medical journals, posters presented in international conferences, or statistics reported on website - are almost always quoted at the bottom of their presentation slides.

Similarly, when we write, we also need to acknowledge the original sources as a show of respect.

On top of that, citing the sources gives more credibility to the information, and thus to your article. Referencing is also important to avoid being criticized for plagiarizing other people’s work. For readers who are keen to know more about a particular point raised in the article, the references direct them to the original source for further information.

Referencing style
Referencing style may differ from company/publisher to company/publisher. Your editorial department may already have an in-house style manual for you to follow. The guidelines may be taken directly from a distinguished medical journal, e.g. JAMA (Journal of American Medical Journal), or modified from one. Remember to read those referencing style guidelines carefully.

In most referencing guidelines, references are identified throughout the manuscript with superscripted numbers, like this – ¹, though certain referencing styles may have the numbers enclosed in brackets, like this - (1). At the end of the manuscript, the reference list is presented in a numerical order, with each number corresponding to the respective superscripted numbers in the article.

Referencing sources from medical journals
A published paper reference contains these elements: authors’ name, name of the journal/publication in which the source is published, year published, volume number and possibly issue number of the journal/publication, and the specific page numbers of the source.

Below is an example excerpted from a event highlights that I wrote quite some time ago:

Up to 1 billion individuals worldwide are affected by hypertension,¹ an endothelial dysfunctional disease leading to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.² It is very common among diabetic patients with renal disease. The simultaneous presence of hypertension and renal disease increases the mortality risk of these patients considerably.³...

References:
1. Chobanian AV, et al. JAMA 2003;289(19):2560-2572.
2. Bobik A. J Hypertens 2005;23(8):1473-1475.
3. Wang SL, et al. Diabetes Care 1996;19(4):305-312.

Note that:

• The journal names are abbreviated and set to italic font.
• For a paper authored by more than one person, I use ‘et al’ to represent ‘and others’. Different journals/publishers have different ways of doing this. I noticed papers in JAMA, for example, list all authors if there are not more than 6 of them. If there are more than 6 authors, their style is to name 3 and add ‘et al’ after the last name (see examples below). Mine only named the first author because I was trying to save space.
• Sometimes, if space allows, it is good to put in the title of the article, which I didn’t do due to the reason as in above.
• The issue number (i.e. number in bracket) may or may not be used.

Examples:

Patel V, Chisholm D, Rabe-Hesketh S, Dias-Saxena F, Andrew G, Mann A. Efficacy and cost-effectiveness of a drug and psychological treatment for common mental disorders in general health care in Goa, India. Lancet. 2003;361(9351):33-39.

Lin EH, VonKorff M, Russo J, et al. Can depression treatment in primary care reduce disability? Arch Fam Med. 2000;9(10):1052-1058.

Note:

• Examples are taken from Bolton P, et al. JAMA 2007;298(5):519-527.
• The titles of the articles are stated as well.

In short, no matter what referencing style you are using, it has to be consistent throughout the manuscript.

I will show some examples of referencing non-journal sources in my next post.