Medicine: Referencing

Medical students are expected to reference in the Vancouver, or numbered style. This is the style used by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE and PubMed. The full manual is freely available as Citing Medicine: The NLM Style guide. 

Vancouver style is a numbered style, similar to the style you see in the BMJ or The Lancet. To make Vancouver style work well with Endnote reference manager, there are a few things you need to know.

• Abbreviated journal titles
• Reference types in Endnote – which Reference Type to use for which document
• Fields in EndNote – which fields in the EndNote reference to enter certain pieces of information

This brief guide highlights the top Vancouver-EndNote how-tos.

Reference management systems such as EndNote can help you reference accurately and quickly. 

EndNote online is recommended for BLS students doing research projects.

• Gather references from different sources, such as OneSearch, Web of Science and PubMed
• Capture webpages
• Organise and store your PDFs and links
• Format your bibliography in the Lancaster University Library Harvard style
• Use with Word to insert citations into your writing

Vancouver is a numerical referencing system and is commonly used in Medicine and the Sciences. 

Note : These are general guidelines on using the Vancouver referencing style based on the  NLM Style Guide.  Always refer to the referencing guidelines provided by your department in the first instance.

You can also look up the most commonly cited document types in Vancouver in the Referencing Guide. The guides show how to format the in-text citation, and how to format the required elements in the reference list.

You can only work automatically with journal title abbreviations in EndNote desktop. In the desktop application you need to import one of EndNote's abbreviation files.

To do this:

1. click on Tools
2. Open term lists > Journals term lists
3. Highlight any terms currently there and click Delete terms
4. Click on the Lists tab, and on Import list..., select the relevant list and click Open.

The abbreviations list will be loaded into your EndNote program. Now if your style requires abbreviated journal titles, they will be supplied automatically.

If you need to look up an abbreviated journal title in medicine you can look them up in the NLM Journal list.