Research Guides: Human Nutrition: Citation Styles & Tools

Why Cite?

Citing the work that supports your research is both an ethical issue and a legal issue.

The ethics of citing is based on the scholarly tradition of giving credit for information and ideas that are not one's own. Science has a long tradition of acknowledging priority through citations. You have the ethical responsibility to cite all works that were used to support your research, to give credit to the earlier work and to provide a clear path for those who follow in your footsteps.

As so eloquently expressed by Isaac Newton in a letter to Robert Hooke in 1675 (Merton 1965):

If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.

The legal issues of citing one's sources are codified in Copyrights, Title 17 of the U.S. Code, which describes the legal protections of authors' and creators' intellectual property rights.

[Merton, RK. 2006. On the shoulders of giants: a Shandean postscript. New York: The Free Press. p. 31]

Citation Styles

AMA Citation Style

AMA MANUAL of STYLE, 11th EDITION by American Medical Association. The AMA Manual of Style is a must-have resource for anyone involved in medical, health, and scientific publishing. Written by an expert committee of JAMA Network editors, this latest edition addresses issues that face authors, editors, and publishers in the digital age. Extensive updates are included in the References chapter, with examples of how to cite digital publications, preprints, databases, data repositories, podcasts, apps and interactive games, and social media. Full-color examples grace the chapter on data display, with newer types of graphic presentations and updated guidance on formatting tables and figures. The manual thoroughly covers ethical and legal issues such as authorship, conflicts of interest, scientific misconduct, intellectual property, open access and public access, and corrections. The Usage chapter has been revised to bring the manual up-to-date on word choice, especially in writing about individuals with diseases or conditions and from various socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and sexual orientation populations. Specific nomenclature entries in many disciplines are presented to guide users in issues of diction, formatting, and preferred terminology. Guidance on numbers, SI units, and math has been updated, and the section on statistics and study design has undergone a major expansion. In sum, the answer to nearly any issue facing a writer or editor in medicine, health care, and related disciplines can be found in the 11th edition of the AMA Manual of Style.
Call Number: , Main Reference (Library Use Only) R119 .A533 2020
ISBN: 9780190246556
Publication Date: 2020

Using Bibliographic Management Tools to Organize

Organize

Endnote [$65 for individual site license from UHM ITS] | Guide to Using Endnote

Endnote is an application that imports citations from your searches in web databases and helps you organize your references. It works with Microsoft Word helping you create in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies.

Endnote Basic [Free] | Guide to Using Endnote Basic

EndNote Basic (formerly EndNote Web) is an online program that helps you organize references and create properly formatted bibliographies. This is a separate program from the desktop version of EndNote. It is a free version of EndNote available for institutions which subscribe to ISI Databases, like Web of Science.

Zotero [Free] | LibGuide to Using Zotero

Zotero is a plug-in from Mozilla that you use with the Firefox browser. Simply download the plug-in, activate the Zotero application by clicking on the Zotero icon in your browser. You can now capture citations into a library held on your hard drive or on a flash drive. Zotero works with Word and OpenOffice after you have downloaded the plug-ins.

Evaluating Web Sites

Publishing on the Web is very different than publishing in print — the traditional medium for scientific literature. Anyone can publish a Web page without anyone evaluating the accuracy or quality of the information. Reviews by peers, reviewers, editors, and publishers are not often applied to Web sites.

The sole responsibility for evaluating the scholarly content of a Web site rests with the Web site user.

Traditional evaluation criteria used for print resources and Web specific criteria are both useful as indicators of quality and should considered when examining Web sites.

Evaluation Criteria

1. Authorship: Is the author identified? What are the author’s credentials? For example, does the site include the author's position and institutional affiliation? Is the URL for an educational institution (.edu) or government agency (.gov)?

2. Accuracy: Can the data be verified from other sources? Does the author have an obvious bias?

3. Audience: Is the site intended for scholars or professionals, for lay people, or for students?

4. Currency: Does the Web site include the date it was created and/or updated? Are the links current?

5. Coverage: Does the site state its intended scope? Is it designed to cover an entire subject, or to give detailed information on one aspect?

6. Relative Value: How does it compare to other sources of similar information? Are there other more accurate or complete sources - possibly in print format?