Citing sources
From CRSWiki
NOTE: the instructions shown here will not work until we install a piece of software on the server; until then ref format is officially a free-for-all!
the software needed is here. please install ASAP!
For accountability, assertions of fact require citations. While the wikimedia engine supports several methods of citing references, for the sake of consistency, only one main method should be used on the CR wiki:
Preferred format
The preferred style shown here shows only the main author. It is easy to read and write. It includes enough information needed to read the article; if more detail is needed, for example, to copy the citation for use elsewhere, then the reader can click thru the PubMed link and get it there.
Embedded into the wiki code, immediately following the text that requires a cititation, is the citation itself, surrounded by <ref> </ref> tags. For instance:
- <ref>Public, J.Q., et al. (2006). "The title of the scholarly article or book", ''Scholarly Journal''. {{PMID|12345678}}</ref>
which, as rendered for the reader, simply leaves a number, like this<ref>Public, J.Q., et al. (2006). "The title of the scholarly article or book", Scholarly Journal. PubMed</ref>.
At the bottom of the module, a single code (<references/>) calls down all the citations from the module, in the order cited, automatically numbers them, and provides reverse links back up into referring locations. While embedding the references makes the wiki code a bit difficult to read, the automatic ordering and numbering of the references allows numerous, inexperienced people to work on the article, including rearranging the order of sections and yet have it remain orderly.
Note that the title starts with a double quotation mark and ends with another, while the journal name is surrounded on each side by a pair of single quotation marks which produces italic.
PubMed links
The PMID template is optional but strongly encouraged. It automatically links to the corresponding entry on the health-sciences citation database PubMed. If the full free-text version of the article is publically available, then use the PMIDfree template. This one is used in the example below.
Formal format
While contributing to a module, if the citations are already available in full format, i.e., with full author list, (as in the example of "alternate format" shown below, then there is no harm in pasting them in directly.
The wiki code for the alternate format looks like this:
- <ref>Public, J.Q., A. Coauthor and J. Doe (2006). "The title of the scholarly article or book", ''Scholarly Journal''. 123(4): 567-89. {{PMIDfree|12345678}}</ref>
And it is cited right here<ref>Public, J.Q., A. Coauthor and J. Doe (2006). "The title of the scholarly article or book.", Scholarly Journal. 123(4): 567-89. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed&term=12345678 PubMed (free)]</ref>.
The above-cited references are automatically copied here:
References
<references/>
