Why cite?
edit- If you add information to an article, be sure to include your references.
- This is important because unreferenced facts are subject to removal.
- What references should you use?
- Published, reliable, independent sources that are trustworthy and authoritative.
- For science: make sure they are peer reviewed and use secondary sources (reviews) over primary sources as much as possible.
- Do not use other Wikipedia articles as sources.
- It is best to use inline citations so that other editors and readers can verify the information you add.
Adding inline citations
editThe easiest way to create an inline citation is using footnotes. You can create footnotes with Wiki markup (or using the console) by adding:
- <ref name=xyz>YOUR SOURCE</ref> ref tags around your source and, if not there already,
- {{Reflist}} under the heading ==References== near the bottom of the page.
The ref tags will convert your source into a footnote reference (like this one[1]).
- ^ YOUR SOURCE
- If you wish to refer to the same reference again you can simply add: <ref name=xyz/>
Formatting sources
editIf your source is a website, you should create an external link to the website address.
To create an external link to your source, put the website address (URL) in square brackets. It is a good idea to provide a short description just after the external site address. This description will be displayed in the reference list as the title of the external site, rather than the actual URL of the site.
- <ref name=xyz>[http://www.google.com Google search engine]</ref>
For other types of references there are special Citation templates:
- For books: <ref name=xxx> {{Cite book | last = | first = | coauthors = | title = | publisher = | date = | pages = | url = | doi = | id = | isbn = }} </ref>
- For Newspaper articles: <ref name=yyy> {{Cite news | last = | first = | coauthors = | title = | newspaper = | pages = | date = | url = | accessdate = }} </ref>
- For Journal articles, the PubMed ID or DOI are usually enough - the missing metadata will then be fetched automatically: <ref name=zzz> {{cite pmid|12615090}}</ref>
or <ref name=Ioannidis-2005> {{cite doi|10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124}}</ref>
- Journal article citations can also be generated quickly by adding the PubMed ID to either web page or this one.
The external links section
edit
Many Wikipedia articles have a separate section labelled External links. This section is for linking to websites with significant and reliable additional information on an article's topic. Not all external links are appropriate for use in a Wikipedia article, see Wikipedia:External links for a guideline. Before adding a website to an External links section, it is advised that you suggest it on the article's Discussion (talk) page.
Inside a single set of brackets, simply type in the full URL for the link, followed by a space and the text that will be visible, for example:
- [http://www.google.com Google search engine]
will display the following, whilst linking to the full URL: