ICS 1-3 EIP Tutorial

Citations provide a formalized way to credit the sources that you use to support your research; they ensure that others are able to find their way to the original author or resource that informed your work. Most importantly, accurate citations prevent plagiarism, i.e. claiming another scholar/author's work as ones' own. 

Various citation styles (or formats) exist; the major ones are: APA (American Psychological Association), AMA (American Medical Association), and MLA (Modern Language Association).

Regardless of the style, citations all include the same basic components:

• What was written - title of the book, journal and/or article
• Who wrote it - the author and/or editor
• When was it written - the publication date
• Where it was published and by whom - the city and publisher, or the journal name, or the host of the web page

Here is an example of an AMA citation for an online journal article with its components labeled:

And this is an APA citation:

What is a DOI?

A Digital Object Identifier, or DOI, is a unique alphanumeric code assigned to individual online content (like journal articles).  DOIs provide a method of reliably locating materials online.  Unlike URLs (i.e. website "addresses"), a DOI number will never change; it therefore provides a more permanent method for locating and accessing the article.

An example of a DOI is 10.1002/1r.21308. Wherever possible, include the DOI number in citing articles from online sources.

The American Medical Association (AMA) sets guidelines for the proper citation of references in the AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors. 

The American Psychological Association (APA) also sets citation and reference guidelines which can be found in the APA Manual of Style. 

TIP: While both AMA and APA are common and appropriate citation styles to use in the Health Sciences, we recommend APA for the following reasons:

• It is more easily applied to a variety of resources, which is particularly useful for ND students who combine knowledge of a variety of modalities.
• There is stronger support and documentation available for students learning to use APA.
• APA doesn't require abbreviated journal titles  - AMA does, and these are time consuming to find, and arduous to generate if the journal is not already listed in PubMed.

The APA guide and the library's Write & Cite LibGuide pages are great reference tools to help you figure out how to cite the most commonly referenced resources.

Auto-generated Citations

Many databases provide autogenerated citations - and as of 2020, PubMed now provides APA, AMA, and NLM citations! 

Check the automated citation!

They are usually a good starting point but need to be double-checked to ensure accuracy.  You can double-check citations by ensuring they include all elements of a citation (see above!) and comparing the formatting with an APA style guide, such as the library's APA Guide.