WRITING REFERENCES IN THE TEXT
By: Dr Saeed Akhtar Khan,
Department of Pathology, University of Health Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan
There are
two methods of writing references in the text. The old traditional method (Harvard
Style) consists of writing surname of
the author and the year of publication in parentheses. The Vancouver style consists of placing
superscripts in text and giving full reference in the bibliography. Since the numbers are to be given in a
consecutive order, these should be given after you have prepared the article in
full. In drafts, you should give the surname
and the year. Switch over to numbers at
the very end.
The following are the guidelines and examples for quoting
references.
1.
A reference in
the text consists of the surname of the author and the year of
publication. It is places in
parentheses. Whether you are quoting
from a journal article, book or a thesis, you will quote the surname of the
author (not the title) in the text. You will quote only the surname.
You will neither quote the initials nor the first or middle name. The example follow:
(Khan 1988)
(Shintaku and Said 1987)
(Akhtar et al 1990)
(Haagensen 1971, Brinton et al
1983)
Note that there is a space
between the surname of the author and the year of publication. Two references
are separated by a comma. Detailed
examples of the text with references are described elow.
2. Example of a reference from an
article or a book written by a single author.
Although biological characteristics of the malignancies of the breast
are comparable to those in the western population, the patients here present at
a younger age and with a more advanced disease (Khan 1988).
This statement is a conclusion
from an article by S. A. Khan published in 1988. Note that only the surname
Khan and the year of publication are quoted.
Initials of the name are not quoted. The full stop appears after the reference has been written. There
is no full stop at the end of the actual sentence.
The above example in Vancouver
style will be as follows:
Although biological characteristics of the malignancies of the breast
are comparable to those in the western population, the patients here present at
a younger age and with a more advanced disease.1
The reference appears at the end
of the sentence numbered in superscript.
3.When there are two authors, the two names
are separated by “and”.
Immunocytochemical staining of oestrogen receptors in formalin fixed paraffin embedded breast cancer tissues is enhanced by pre-treatment of the sections with DNase (Shintaku and Said 1987).
I.P. Shintaku and J.W. Said
published an article in 1987. They
described a procedure to improve the staining of oestrogen receptors. The above statement is based on that
article. Please note that the
initials of the name or even the title of the article are not quoted.
The above example in Vancouver
style will be as follows:
Immunocytochemical staining of
oestrogen receptors in formalin fixed paraffin embedded breast cancer tissues
is enhanced by pre-treatment of the sections with DNase.2
The reference appears at the end
of the sentence numbered in superscript
The following example is a
definition of hyperplasia of the prostate.
Hyperplasia of the prostate is
a benign enlargement of the prostate that results from varying degrees of
hyperplasia of glandular and/or fibromuscular elements (Mostofi and Price
1973).
4.When more than two authors have written the
article, only the surname of the first author is quoted followed by et al
and year of publication. :
Famotidine is an effective and generally well-tolerated drug in the treatment of acute duodenal ulcer (Akhtar et al 1990).
5.In all the above examples the
statement was given first and the reference was give at the end. There is another method. Sometimes the reference is used in the
running text. In such a case only the
year of publication is placed in parentheses.
For example the above-mentioned statement will be quoted in this way:
Akhtar et al (1990) concluded
that Famotidine was an effective and generally well-tolerated drug in the
treatment of acute duodenal ulcer.
The above example in Vancouver
style will be as follows:
Akhtar et al3 concluded
that Famotidine was an effective and generally well-tolerated drug in the
treatment of acute duodenal ulcer.
Reference appears as a
superscript number after the name(s) of the author(s).
6.If a similar observation has
been made by different authors in different publications and you want to quote
all of them, then such references should be placed in chronological order and
separated by commas.
There is no association
between history of breast-feeding and risk of developing breast cancer
(Haagensen 1971, Brinton et al 1983).
The above example in Vancouver
style will be as follows:
There is no association
between history of breast-feeding and risk of developing breast cancer.4,5
In this example Haagensen, a leading
authority on diseases of the breast noted that detailed lactation histories did
not reveal any increased risk in patients who did not breast feed their
children. Brinton and his colleagues
also reached the same conclusion.
Observations of both these authors are combined into a single statement. A more usual format of such an example is
the following statement:
A number of studies show human
papillomavirus infection of the cervix occurring in young women (Meisels et al
1983, Purola et al 1983, Brisson et al 1988).
The above example in Vancouver
style will be as follows
A number of studies show human
papillomavirus infection of the cervix occurring in young women.6-8
Instead of writing 6,7,8 you can
write 6-8.
All such references should be
quoted in chronological order (according to the year of publication). In the above-mentioned example all the three
references quoted can be placed immediately after the word studies. The sentence becomes like this:
A number of studies (Meisels
et al 1983, Purola et al 1983, Brisson et al 1988) show human papillomavirus
infection of the cervix occurring in young women.
The above example in Vancouver
style will be as follows
A number of studies6-8
show human papillomavirus infection of the cervix occurring in young women.
7. In the case when a sentence
contains different observations by different authors, then each observation
must be followed immediately by its reference given in parentheses. A vivid example is being quoted from an
article by Lewin et al (1976).
Malacoplakia is an uncommon
inflammatory disease that was originally described in the bladder (Michaelis
and Gutmann 1902, von Hanseman 1903) but has subsequently been found in other
genitourinary sites (Bleisch and Konikov 1952, Nation 1956, Melicow 1957,
Haukohi and Chinchinian 1958, Blackwell and Finlay-Jones 1959, Hoffman and
Garrido 1964, Smith 1965, Green 1968, Walesman and Rampton 1908), the
gastrointestinal tract (Gonzales-Angulo et al 1965, Turner and Lattes 1965,
Yunis et al 1967, Finley-Jones et al 1968, Rywlin et al 1969, Blackshear 1970, Di
Silvo and Bartlett 1971, Dockerty 1972, Ranchod and Kahn 1972, Lewin et al
1974), skin (Leclerc and Bernier 1972), Lungs (Gupta et al 1972), Bones (Gupta
et al 1972) and mesenteric lymph nodes (Gonzeles-Angulo et al 1965, Yunis et al
1967).
The above example in Vancouver
style will be as follows
Malacoplakia is an uncommon
inflammatory disease that was originally described in the bladder9,10 but has subsequently been found in other
genitourinary sites,11-19
the gastrointestinal tract,20-29 skin,30 lungs,31 Bones31 and mesenteric lymph
nodes.20,22
In this example the authors have
given different sites of malakoplakia and each site is followed by its
reference(s). It would have been wrong
if all the different sites were mentioned together and all the references put
at the end of the sentence.
8.Occasionally you come across a
reference that is required by you but you do not have the reference.(This
should not be the case in todays world of internet). Suppose you read an article by McNicol et al (1989), which
contained an important statement regarding pap smears by some other
author. Unfortunately you failed to
trace that article. You are forced to
depend on McNicol et al. Therefore you
will quote that statement in this way:
It is estimated that 10-50
percent of papanicoloau smears may be misdiagnosed for several reasons,
including inadequate specimens (Fetherston 1983 cited by McNicol et al 1989).
Here is another example:
The large irregular nuclei
have multiple bizarre shaped nucleoli and appear the same irrespective of the
degree of cytoplasmic differentiation (Pierce and Beals 1964 cited by Mostofi
and Price 1973).
In a running text such a
reference goes thus:
Pierce and Beals (1964 cited
by Mostofi and Price 1973) have described the ultra-structure of seminoma cells
in detail.
In both these examples you did
not have access to the article by Pierce and Beals. But you read Mostofi and Price (1973) who stated that Pierce and
Beals had carried out such and such work.
Note: The references, which you have not read, are not quoted in the
bibliography. Therefore you will not
quote the reference of Pierce and Beals. Instead you will quote Mostofi and
Price (1973).
9.Some articles are written not
by individual authors but by a team or an organisation. In such articles the name of the team or the
organisation and the year of publication are quoted. Example:
Malignancies of the breast are
the commonest malignancies of the female in Pakistan (Pakistan Medical Research
Council 1982).
10.Sometimes you have to quote an
article whose author is not known. Editorials of the journals are an
example. These articles can be quoted
as Editorial/Leading article with year of publication. A better way is to quote them as anonymous
with year of publication. Example:
Study of argyrophilic
nucleolar organiser regions is a new technique available to histopathologist
(Anonymous 1987).
In Vancouver style, these examples are quoted as usual giving superscript numbers at the end.
Again, it is advised that if you are writing references with numbers, you should initially write them with authors’ names and year in your draft. After you have checked and you have made corrections and are making a final copy for submission, only then you should switch over to numbers. Editing numbers is difficult. If you have to insert a number in the text, then you have to alter all the subsequent numbers, not only in the text but also in the bibliography.