Adding References

Physiopedia uses the Vancouver style of referencing as this is the style used in most leading medical journals. When making or editing a page in Physiopedia and you have used an idea from a book, journal article, etc. you must acknowledge this in your text. This is referred to as ‘citing’. Each piece of work which is cited in your text should have a unique number, assigned in the order of citation. If, in your text, you cite a piece of work more than once, the same citation number should be used.

Adding the Code

For the referencing tool to work, you will need to ensure that you this piece of code <references /> under the 'References' heading on your page is present. If it is not there, you will need to add it by following these instructions:

1. Click on Edit in the toolbar at the top right corner of the page and select "Edit Source" from the drop-down menu.
2. Scroll down to the References heading which will look like this: == References ==
3. Underneath this heading paste this code: <references />. This is the wikitext that MUST be present for the referencing tool to work.
4. Click the grey Save Page button at the bottom of the page and your references should now appear.

To Cite a Piece of Work

To cite a piece of work in Physiopedia, follow these instructions:

1. Click on Edit in the toolbar at the top right corner of the page and select "Edit" from the drop-down menu.
2. Once the text editor has loaded, click where you wish to put your reference.
3. Once the cursor is in place, click on Cite from the toolbar then select "Basic" from the drop-down menu.
4. A new window will pop-up asking you to enter the reference information for the journal, book, video, etc that you used.
5. When you are done entering the reference information using the Vancouver style of referencing, click on the blue Insert button at the top right corner of the window.
6. The reference will now appear as a blue number in the area of text you referenced.
7. Click on the blue Save Page button at the top right of the page.

To Cite a Piece of Work More than Once on the Same Page

If you wish to site the same piece of work for a different piece of text in the page, follow these instructions:

1. While in the text editor (as stated above), click where you wish to put your reference to place your cursor, then click on Cite from the toolbar, and then select "Re-use" from the drop-down menu.
2. A new window will pop-up with the reference you just made using the steps above being listed.
3. Select the reference then click on the blue Insert button at the top right corner of the window.
4. The reference will now appear as the same blue number in the area of text you referenced previously.
5. Click on the blue Save Page button at the top right of the page.

Additional Resources

• For further explanation have a look at the MediaWiki Extension:Cite page, the MediaWiki footnotes page and the Wikipedia Footnotes page.
• See our detailed guidelines on how to implement Vancouver Referencing.