The Proper Use and Citations and References

What is it about?

You are nearing the end of the process of writing your scientific paper. You have carefully written a concise introduction, provided a detailed description of your methods, reported your results clearly, and discussed the meaning of your results. You may even have the perfect title and abstract ready to go. But the need to keep your focus and attention to detail remains, because there is still an area where you can stumble and hurt your efforts: the citations and references. Lest you consider references to be a minor component of a paper, consider the fact that the Council of Science Editors devotes 86 pages in their style manual to the proper use of references (1) and the AMA Manual of Style (2) includes 41 pages covering references. During the writing process you compiled a file (a stack of photocopied articles or an electronic database) of previously published papers that directly or indirectly contributed to your study. Therefore, it is important to give credit to (cite) the ideas, methods, and results of others. It is also important to tell readers where they can access documentation of this work (references). A citation (typically a number or the author name and year) inserted in the text identifies material that should be attributed to or associated with previously published work. A corresponding reference documents the original source of the material. Citations and references can be a source of information for readers, but they can also become a source of frustration if not selected and used wisely. So here I go over some basics of the use of citations and references.

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Why is it important?

Citations play an important role throughout a scientific paper because they occur in nearly every section of the paper, including figures and tables. Similarly, the references at the end of a scientific paper play an important role because they direct readers to resources that can help them understand the study, reproduce the results, and critically evaluate what contribution the study makes. Citations and references that are clear, are accurate, and add value may not get you bonus points, but citations and references that are unclear, inaccurate, or unhelpful will hurt a paper's chances of acceptance. Never underestimate the power of a reference.