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University Library Services

Subject Guide: Medicine

This guide brings together library resources for your studies and research. Use these resources alongside your recommended reading from your tutors to extend your research into new areas

Cite Them Right

Referencing is a key skill in academia, citing ideas from authors you have read acknowledges their role in our understanding of the subject

First you’ll need to know which referencing style to use. This information is in your unit handbook. If you haven’t been given a specific reference style, the most important thing is to be consistent.

The library subscribes to Cite Them Right which lists the main citing styles, such as Harvard and Vancouver and gives you a step-by-step process showing how to cite. It also includes a ‘basics of referencing’ section.

Our top tip is to make use of the Cite Them Right website:

Support for Referencing

We offer daily Study Support drop-ins online via Library Talk live chat every week day:
Monday 11:30am – 1pm
Tuesday 3:30 – 4:30pm
Wednesday 3:30 – 4:30pm
Thursday 3:30 – 4:30pm
Friday 11:30am – 1pm
You can access up to 10 minutes of guidance at each online drop-in session. These are perfect for short Study Skills queries or referencing help.

You can also book an appointment with a study skills advisor for advice on how to avoid plagiarism and referencing. The appointment is for up to an hour.

The library has a range of books to help with referencing and avoiding plagiarism in both library buildings as well as eBooks for you to use online.  Search “referencing” in Library Search

If you use a database such as Library Search, PubMed, or Google Scholar they all have an option to “cite” resources. eBook collections, such as ClinicalKey Student also have this feature. To ensure your references are consistent, either use the same tool for each reference, or alter the reference to the same style each time. These tools aren't always accurate, so it is still important for you to check the references before handing in you assignment.

 How to use ClinicalKey to cite 
How to use PubMed, MEDLINE and Google scholar to cite

 

Further reference generators can be found on the Reference management guide:

 

These two guides have been created by staff at the University of Sunderland to help you with how to reference and how to use reference management software.

When citing journal articles using the Vancouver style, the titles of journals should be abbreviated. You can search for a journal's abbreviated title using the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) catalogue:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/

Reference management software

Reference management software such as Zotero, and EndNote Online provide a place to store your references, share them with others and, most importantly, a function to cite your sources within your Word or Google Docs assignments and create a bibliography. 

The University of Sunderland recommends Zotero.

Reference Generators are online tools that help you reference in your assignments by automatically generating a reference for you in a particular referencing style.

If you decide to use any type of reference management tool you will still need to understand the mechanics of referencing to ensure you can spot any errors.

Click on the link below for a guide to on how to use Reference Management tools to help organise your reading and cite papers.