MGH Guides: Scholarly Communication: Citing Sources

Citation Format Guidance

AMA Manual of Style (11th Edition)
Publication Date: 2020
APA Style Help
Guide to help with APA style from the American Psychological Association.
Instructions to Authors in the Health Sciences
Links to sites providing instructions to authors for over 6,000 journals in the health and life sciences. Use these instructions to determine what citation style should be used for a given journal. Compiled by Mulford Health Science Library, University of Toledo.
Samples of Formatted References for Authors of Journal Articles
Examples of citations formatted based on the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Citing Medicine: the NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (2nd ed.)
For those who need more in depth guidance on the ICMJE standards on citing references. This guide from the National Library of Medicine provides detailed instructions on how to cite almost any type of document.
AMA Style Guide
A guide from the University of Washington Libraries that summarizes the fundamentals of AMA style
Purdue Online Writing Lab
Extensive examples of how to write and cite in APA, MLA, and Chicago styles.

Citation Software

Citation management software (also known as bibliographic software) serves two purposes:

Provides a platform to keep track of, organize, and share citations of interest
Creates in text citations and automatically generates bibliographies of citations for manuscripts

Options for citations management software, a summary of key differences between them, and the links to download the software are below. If you have questions about choosing citation software, Ask Us!

	EndNote	Zotero	Mendeley
Cost	$115 from RISC	Free (open source)	Free and premium options. Free option has limits on file storage and sharing citations.
Cloud/Desktop	Both	Both	Both
Technical Support	Direct technical support from Clarivate Analytics	User community & software developer technical support via online forum	User community support; limited direct technical support from Elsevier
Word Processing Compatibility	Plug ins for MS Word, PowerPoint (Windows only), OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Apple Pages.	Plug ins for MS Word, Google Docs, OpenOffice, LibreOffice	Plug ins for MS Word.
Other Considerations	Steeper learning curve; has the most customization features; has "Find Full Text" PDF finder feature.	Good browser plugin. Available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Harvard/Countway has a getting started guide for Zotero here.	Good browser plugin, good at importing data from PDFs. Some problems with citation plugin incompatibility with Macs.

EndNote
Available for purchase (at a deep discount) through Partners Research Information Science & Computing (RISC).
Zotero
Freely available, open source citation software.
Mendeley
A free and a premium versions at added cost are available. The free version has lower file storage limits and limits on sharing groups of citations with others.