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Brackenridge Pharmacy Library: Citing Your Sources

The following is a selective list of resources that focus on the curriculum and interests of the students and faculty of the Feik School of Pharmacy.

Why Cite?

Avoiding plagiarism is the most recognized reason for citing your sources well and correctly.  For more information see the Library's complete plagiarism guide:

There are other important reasons as well:

  • To provide evidence and/or support for your ideas.
  • To give credit to other scholarly work.
  • To offer a "trail" for readers to go back to.

Citing correctly means selecting a particular style for your bibliography (and in-text citations).  If you are publishing your work, you will need to check the style that is used by the journal.  

There are two common styles used in medical writing and publishing: Vancouver Style and AMA style.

RefWorks

RefWorks is a web-based bibliography and database manager.

  • Create your own personal database of references.
  • Organize references with folders for each project.
  • Import references from library databases or websites.
  • Include links to the full-text of articles
  • Use these references in writing papers.
  • Download plugins for Microsoft Word to format in-text citations and a bibliography.
  • Citation styles include: APA. AMA, Vancouver, and unique professional journal styles.
  • Share citation folders with others for group projects.

To learn more, take a look at the UIW RefWorks research guide

Citing Sources: AMA Style

AMA (American Medical Association ) Manual of Style, 10th ed. (available electronically)

AMA Manual

AMA Manual of Style - AMA website. (Also see: AMA FAQs).
Quick Reference Guide - from Samford University.
Citation Machine - interactive web tool designed to assist students in their effort to respect other people's intellectual properties.
**Look up journals in PubMed/NCBI to find their abbreviations**

 

Citing Sources: Vancouver Style

Vancouver is a numbered referencing style commonly used in medicine and biological science, and consists of:

  • citations to someone else's work in the text, indicated by the use of a number

  • a sequentially numbered reference list at the end of the document providing full details of the corresponding in-text reference

The Vancouver Style is formally known as Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (ICMJE Recommendations), and is gets its informal name from being developed in Vancouver, BC, Canada in 1978 by a committee of editors of medical journals. Well over 1,000 medical journals (including ICMJE members BMJ, CMAJ, JAMA & NEJM) use this style. Vancouver Style follows rules established by the International committee of Medical Journal Editors, now maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. It is also known as Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals.

There is no official manual of the Vancouver style, but the US National Library of Medicine's style guide is now considered the most authoritative manual on this type of referencing.

Introduction to the Vancouver Style
http://guides.lib.monash.edu/citing-referencing/vancouver

​Citing Medicine, The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, 2nd ed.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/

Vancouver Style (Uniform Requirements) References 
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html

Other Citation Styles

The APA style from the American Psychological Association is a style that iis often used in the social sciences and sciences.

OWL at Purdue APA Guide: Useful and comprehensive APA guide from Purdue University.
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