References

Introduction

A reference or footnote is a note placed at the bottom of a page of a document to comment on a part of the main text, or to provide a reference for it, or both. The connection between the relevant text and its footnote is indicated by a number which appears both after the relevant text and before the footnote.

Footnotes are sometimes useful for relevant text that would distract from the main point if embedded in the main text, yet are helpful in explaining a point in greater detail. Footnotes are also often used to cite references that are relevant to a text. Citation of sources is required by WikiDoc.

Preferred method of adding references

One goal of WikiDoc is to create reference lists that allow you to click on the PubMed ID number at the end of the reference and go to the primary article itself. This greatly facilitates locating references. Therefore, the preferred method of citing references includes a method by which not only the article is cited, but also the PubMed ID number.

The preferred method for inserting a reference is as follows:

Use PubMed to locate the article you are interested in by clicking here

You can access software for converting a pubmed ID number into a reference by clicking here

Add a Reference or Footnote

Place a <ref> ... </ref> immediately after the sentence where you want a footnote number to appear.
Next, type the text of the note between the ref tags. For example if I typed this

This was on of the first articles I published <ref>J Fam Pract. 2000 Oct;49(10):921-3.</ref>

It would appear as this

This was on of the first articles I published ^[1]

Finally Add a Reference Section at the Bottom of Your Article

Place the <references/> tag in a "Notes" or "References" section near the end of the article and the list of notes will be generated here.

This page is a style guide, describing how to write citations in articles.

Wikipedia:Verifiability, which is policy, says that attribution is required for "direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged". Any material that is challenged and for which no source is provided may be removed by any editor. For information about the importance of using good sources in biographies of living persons, see Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, which is policy.

If you do not know how to format the citation, provide as much information as you can; others can remove unneeded information, but can't fabricate information to make up a deficient citation.

Why sources should be cited

Wikipedia is by its very nature a work by people with widely different knowledge and skills. The reader needs to be assured that the material within it is reliable: this is especially important where statements are made about controversial issues. The purpose of citing your sources is:

To improve the overall credibility and authoritative nature of Wikipedia.
To credit a source for providing useful material and to avoid claims of plagiarism.
To show that your edit is not original research.
To ensure that the content of articles is credible and can be checked by any reader or editor.
To help users find additional information on the topic.
To reduce the likelihood of editorial disputes, or to resolve any that arise.
To ensure that material about living persons complies with Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons.

When to cite sources

Template:Style

When you add content

All material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source.

The need for citations is especially important when writing about opinions held on a particular issue. Avoid weasel words where possible, such as, "Some people say ..." Instead, make your writing verifiable: find a specific person or group who holds that opinion and give a citation to a reputable publication in which they express that opinion. Remember that Wikipedia is not a place for expressing your own opinions or for original research.

Because this is the English Wikipedia, English-language sources should be given whenever possible, and should always be used in preference to other language sources of equal calibre. However, do give references in other languages where appropriate. If quoting from a different language source, an English translation should be given with the original-language quote beside it.

When adding material to the biography of a living person

Biographies of living persons should be sourced with particular care, for legal and ethical reasons. All contentious material about living persons must cite a reliable source. Do not wait for another editor to request a source. If you find unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about a living person — whether in an article or on a talk page — remove it immediately! Do not leave it in the article and ask for a source. Do not move it to the talk page. This applies whether the material is in a biography or any other article.

When you quote someone

You should always add a citation when quoting published material, and the citation should be placed directly after the quotation, which should be enclosed within double quotation marks — "like this" — or single quotation marks if it is a quote-within-a-quote — "and here is such a 'quotation' as an example." For long quotes, you may wish to use Quotation templates.

Images

Images must include source details and a copyright tag on the image description page. It is important that you list the author of the image if known (especially if different from the source), which is important both for copyright and for informational purposes. Some copyright licenses require that the original author receive credit for their work. If you download an image from the web, you should give the URL:

Source: Downloaded from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4280841.stm

If you got the image from an offline source, you should specify:

Source: Scanned from public record #5253 on file with Anytown, Somestate public surveyor

When you check content added by others

You can also add sources for material you did not write. Adding citations is an excellent way to contribute to Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards and Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check for organized efforts to add citations.

How to cite sources

Shortcut:

[[:WP:CITE#HOW]]

Articles can be supported with references in two ways: the provision of general references – books or other sources that support a significant amount of the material in the article – and inline citations, that is, references within the text, which provide source information for specific statements. Inline citations are needed for statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, including contentious material about living persons, and for all quotations.

Say where you got it

It is improper to copy a citation from an intermediate source without making it clear that you saw only that intermediate source. For example, you might find information on a web page which says it comes from a certain book. Unless you look at the book yourself to check that the information is there, your reference is really the web page, which is what you must cite. The credibility of the article rests on the credibility of the web page, as well as the book, and the article itself must make that clear.

Full citations

All citation techniques require detailed full citations to be provided for each source used. Full citations must contain enough information for other editors to identify the specific published work you used.

Full citations for books typically include: the name of the author, the title of the book or article, the date of publication, and page numbers. The name of the publisher, city of publication, and ISBN are optional. For journal articles, include volume number, issue number and page numbers. Citations for newspaper articles typically include the title of the article in quotes, the byline (author's name), the name of the newspaper in italics, date of publication, page number(s), and the date you retrieved it if it is online.

For two books by the same author, published the same year, using Harvard referencing, this might be:

Clancy, T. (1996a). Executive Orders. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0-399-14218-5
Clancy, T. (1996b). Marine. New York: Berkley Books. ISBN 0-425-15454-8

If the article in which the preceding examples appeared used footnotes rather than Harvard citations, the letter after the year would be omitted.

In the Harvard and embedded links citation systems, full citations appear at the end of the article in a section labeled "References." In the footnotes system, full citations may appear in a "References" section or may appear directly in the footnotes.

When citing books and articles, provide page numbers where appropriate. Page numbers must be included in a citation that accompanies a specific quotation from, or a paraphrase or reference to, a specific passage of a book or article. The edition of the book should be included in the reference section, or included in the footnote, because pagination can change between editions. Page numbers are especially important in case of lengthy unindexed books. Page numbers are not required when a citation accompanies a general description of a book or article, or when a book or article, as a whole, is being used to exemplify a particular point of view.

Citation templates

The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged by this or any other guideline. Templates may be used at the discretion of individual editors, subject to agreement with other editors on the article. Some editors find them helpful, arguing that they maintain a consistent style across articles, while other editors find them unnecessary and annoying, particularly when used inline in the text, because they make the text harder to read in edit mode and therefore harder to edit. Because they are optional and contentious, citation templates should not be added against consensus, and editors should not change articles from one style to another if there are objections.

Various citation templates can be used to format full citations. Template for specific formats, such as {{cite book}}, are common. The general {{Citation}} template has additional functionality to support Harvard referencing.

Inline citations

Harvard referencing

Under the Harvard referencing system, a book is cited in the text in parentheses, after the section, sentence, or paragraph for which the book was used as a source, using the surname of the author and the year of publication only, with the parentheses closing before the period, as in (Author 2005). These citations can be generated by using inline {{Harvard citation}} templates.

A full citation is then placed at the end of the text in an alphabetized list of "References". If full citations use the {{Citation}} template, the Harvard citation as above will include an automatic link to the full citation. According to The Oxford Style Manual, the Harvard system is the "most commonly used reference method in the physical and social sciences" (Ritter 2002).

Page numbers must be included in a citation that accompanies a specific quotation from, or a paraphrase or reference to, a specific passage of a book or article. They usually follow the date in this way: (Author 2006:28).

In article, common variations:

For two authors, use (Smith & Jones 2005); for more authors, use (Smith et al. 2005).
If the same author has published two books in 1996, and both are being referenced in the text, this is written as (Clancy 1996a) and (Clancy 1996b).
The specific page, section, or division of the cited work should usually follow the date in this way: (Author 2006:28).
If the date of publication is unavailable, use "n.d." (meaning, no date)
Newspaper articles may give the name of the newspaper and the date of publication after the sentence (The Guardian, December 17, 2005).

In a "References" section at the end of the article:

For an article: in the case of (Traynor 2005) or (The Guardian, December 17, 2005), this might be:

Traynor, I. "Judge tells Ankara to decide on fate of leading author", The Guardian, December 17, 2005.

Footnotes

A footnote is a note placed at the bottom of a page of a document to comment on a part of the main text, or to provide a reference for it, or both. The connection between the relevant text and its footnote is indicated by a number or symbol which appears both after the relevant text and before the footnote.

Place a <ref> ... </ref> where you want a footnote reference number to appear in an article—type the text of the note between the ref tags.
Place the <references/> tag in a "Notes" or "References" section near the end of the article—the list of notes will be generated here.

Example:

The Sun is pretty big,<ref>Miller, E: "The Sun", page 23. Academic Press, 2005</ref> however the Moon is not so big.<ref>Smith, R: "Size of the Moon", ''Scientific American'', 46(78):46</ref> == References == <references/>

Result:

The Sun is pretty big,^[2] however the Moon is not so big.^[3]

Section headings

Recommended section names to use for footnotes in Wikipedia are:

==Notes==
==Footnotes==
==References==

Maintaining a separate "References" section in addition to "Notes"

It can be helpful when footnotes are used that a separate "References" section also be maintained, in which the sources that were used are listed in alphabetical order. With articles that have lots of footnotes, it can become hard to see after a while exactly which sources have been used, particularly when the footnotes also contain explanatory text. A References section, which lists citations in alphabetical order, helps readers to see at a glance the quality of the references used.

If such a section is included, the footnotes should be in a separate section entitled "Notes" or "Footnotes." Where an alphabetical list of references is provided, "short footnotes" may be used, where the footnotes contain only an author, perhaps title, and page number, without giving a full citation in the footnote itself.

Scrolling reference lists

Scrolling reference lists should never be used, because of issues with readability, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring. Additionally, it cannot be guaranteed that such reference lists will display properly in all web browsers.

Where to place reference tags

Some words, phrases or facts must be referenced mid-sentence, while others are referenced at the end. Frequently, a reference tag will coincide with punctuation and many editors put the reference tags after punctuation (except dashes), as is recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS).^[4] Some editors prefer the style of journals such as Nature which place references before punctuation. Each article should be internally consistent.

Notes

footnote examples

↑ J Fam Pract. 2000 Oct;49(10):921-3.
↑ Miller, E: "The Sun", page 23. Academic Press, 2005
↑ Smith, R: "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 46(78):46
↑ "Note reference numbers. The superior numerals used for note reference numbers in the text should follow any punctuation marks except the dash, which they precede. The numbers should also be placed outside closing parentheses." (The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed. 1993, Clause 15.8, p. 494)

Embedded links

Web pages referenced in an article can be linked to directly by enclosing the URL in square brackets. For example, a reference to a newspaper article can be embedded like: [http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1601858,00.html], which looks like this: [1]

Do not add a text label to embedded links in the body of a wikipedia article.

A full citation is also required in a References section at the end of the article.

*Plunkett, John. [http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1601858,00.html "Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying"], ''The Guardian'', [[October 27]] [[2005]]. Accessed [[October 27]] [[2005]].

which appears as:

Plunkett, John. "Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying", The Guardian, October 27 2005. Accessed October 27 2005.

Dealing with citation problems

Unsourced material

If an article has no references, and you are unable to find them yourself, you can tag the article with the template {{Unreferenced}}, so long as the article is not nonsensical or a biography of a living person, in which case you should request admin assistance. If a particular claim in an article lacks citation and is doubtful, consider placing {{fact}} after the sentence or removing it. If you have time to try and find a reference please do so, it's better to have 5 fully referenced articles rather than 50 articles all tagged with {{fact}}. It is often just as quick to find and create a reference as it is to tag something with {{fact}}. If you are unsure of how to create references, you may find this tool very useful as it will create all the necessary reference code from just a few details you supply.

Consider the following in deciding which action to take:

1. If it is doubtful but not harmful to the whole article or to Wikipedia, use the {{fact}} tag, but remember to go back and remove the claim if no source is produced within a reasonable time.

2. If it is doubtful and harmful, you should remove it from the article; you may want to move it to the talk page and ask for a source, unless you regard it as very harmful or absurd, in which case it should not be posted to a talk page either. Use your common sense.

All unsourced and poorly sourced contentious material about living persons should be removed from articles and talk pages immediately. It should not be tagged. See Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and Wikipedia:Libel.

What to do when a reference link "goes dead"

, WebCite

When a link in the References section or Notes section "goes dead", it should be repaired or replaced if possible, but not deleted. External links/Further reading sections are not as important, but bad links in those sections should also be fixed. Often, a live substitute link can be found. In most cases, one of the following approaches will preserve an acceptable citation:

Some pages can be recovered from the Internet Archive or WebCite. Just go to http://www.archive.org/ or http://www.webcitation.org, respectively, and search for the old link by URL. Make sure that your new citation mentions the date the page was archived by the Internet Archive. In case of WebCite, any broken URL can be searched for and replaced using the format http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=URL&date=DATE, where URL is the URL that is broken and needs to be restored. The DATE variable is optional and indicates the (approximate) caching date. For example, http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Health_Report_July_2003.pdf&date=2005-12-31 retrieves a copy of the URL http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Health_Report_July_2003.pdf which is closest to the date of Dec 31st, 2005 (in this example the actual caching date was 21 days before the requested date). WebCite allows on-demand prospective archiving and is not crawler-based, i.e. pages are only archived if the author has requested archiving when he cited the piece for the first time, which is highly recommended
If this was a non-blind citation of web-only material, it may be worth the effort to search the target site for an equivalent page at a new location, an indication that the whole site has moved, etc.
If the link was merely a "convenience link" to an online copy of material that originally appeared in print, and an appropriate substitute cannot be found, it is acceptable to drop the link but keep the citation.
If you cannot find the page on the Internet Archive, remember that you can often find recently deleted pages in Google's cache. They will not be there long, and it is no use linking to them, but this may let you find the content, which can be useful in finding an equivalent page elsewhere on the Internet and linking to that.

If none of those strategies succeed, do not remove the inactive reference, but rather record the date that the original link was found to be inactive — even inactive, it still records the sources that were used, and it is possible hard copies of such references may exist, or alternatively that the page will turn up in the near future in the Internet Archive, which deliberately lags by six months or more. When printed sources become outdated, scholars still routinely cite those works when referenced.

Some source material, especially scientific papers, can be cited using a digital object identifier, by linking through dx.doi.org/. This will allow citation links to remain intact even if the URL changes.

Tools

WebCite - tool to archive webpages to allow stable citation links.
Template builder — Given an ISBN, a PubMed ID, etc., output a citation which can be pasted into a Wikipedia article.
Reference generator — generates wikicode for journals, webpages, and other commonly cited sources.
User:CitationTool - tool for finding citation errors and fixing them.
User:Fictional tool - tool for cleaning up web citations
Wikicite is a free program that helps editors to properly reference their Wikipedia contributions using citation templates. It is written in Visual Basic .NET, making it suitable only for users with the .NET Framework installed on Windows, or, for other platforms, the Mono alternative framework. Wikicite and its source code is freely available, see the developer's page for further details.
OttoBib.com a free tool to generate an alphabetized bibliography for books, using an input list of International Standard Book Number (ISBN) numbers, with output in MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian, BibTeX, or Wikipedia format (also generates a permalink).
The <ref> element - adds ref functionality to wiki sites.
Zotero allows you to find articles in Mozilla Firefox and easily paste them into Wikipedia as citation templates using Ctrl-Alt-C
Verisimilus's Cite generation page lets you find articles using built-in Google Scholar interface and automatically produce an appropriate cite template. It also features a BibTeX to {{cite}} converter.

References

Concordia Libraries (Concordia University). Citation and Style Guides. Retrieved December 28, 2004. (This provides a list of common citation styles.)
Citation Styles Handbook: APA
Citation Styles Handbook: MLA
APA Style.org
Using American Psychological Association (APA) Format (Updated to 5th Edition)
Citing Electronic Documentation (APA, Chicago, MLA)
The Columbia Guide to Online Style
Ritter, R. (2002). The Oxford Style Manual. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860564-1
University of Chicago Press Staff. (2003). The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-10403-6

References

Introduction

Preferred method of adding references

Add a Reference or Footnote

Finally Add a Reference Section at the Bottom of Your Article

Why sources should be cited

When to cite sources

When you add content

When adding material to the biography of a living person

When you quote someone

Images

When you check content added by others

How to cite sources

Say where you got it

Full citations

Citation templates

Inline citations

Harvard referencing

Footnotes

Section headings

Maintaining a separate "References" section in addition to "Notes"

Scrolling reference lists

Where to place reference tags

Notes

Embedded links

Further reading/External links

Dealing with citation problems

Unsourced material

What to do when a reference link "goes dead"

Tools

See also

References

Further reading

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