Citing your sources in the text

In the paper, especially in the introduction and discussion, you must present what other people have written about what you have investigated or about studies/observations that are close to your study. The majority should come from international, peer-reviewed journals. In addition, sources of methods, test organisms, test materials, etc. should always be listed. State the citation in the text. Different journals have different standards (Harvard, Oxford, Vancouver, APA, American Chemical Society (ACS)). The instructions for each assignment should specify the type of reference to use.

The reference to a text should be at the end of the sentence where you find the referenced text. That often means the first sentence of a paragraph. If it is clear that it comes from the same work, a more detailed presentation can follow without having to cite again. If you have more than one citation in the same sentence and need to separate the information about what comes from which one, it is appropriate to indicate the citation in each part of the sentence. That means you should not write a whole paragraph and put citations at the end of the paragraph!

Citations should be indicated in one of the following two ways. Either they are numbered in the text (1, 2, 3 etc.), in the order in which they are referred to in the text in brackets (1) or in superscript format¹. In the reference list, write the citations in numerical order. Alternatively, they can be listed in the text with the first author followed by et al., meaning “with several”, and year (Sadée et al. 2013, Svensson et al. 2011). Please note that you only write the first author and no initials. Then write them in alphabetical order in the reference list. Please note, however, that in the reference list (see below) you print all authors’ names. If there are only two authors, write both names (Pond and Tozer, 1984) in both the text and the reference list. Note that websites used should also be cited.

Sometimes you only have an oral citation available. Instead of the year, write (Göran Sahlén, orally [personal communication]). This is the only time that you write the full name in a text citation. Your own or others’ unpublished data can also be cited as (K. Johansson, unpublished observations). Ensure you understand the information correctly and that the person you are quoting is willing to stand by it. You must have the cited person’s permission to quote their data. Oral citations should only be used when written ones are not available, i.e. they cannot replace original references. They should also not be included in the reference list.

When citing, for example, a thesis, you must be careful to quote only the results obtained in the work, not background information such as the introduction to the work.

Cite only reliable online sources (universities, authorities, etc.). Cite them in the same way as other sources (name + year) or with a number.

Provide web addresses of databases and software directly in the text.

If you have used software, common in, for example, bioinformatics (not standard software such as Word), you should cite it as if it were a book. A person, company or organisation may own the rights to the software (equivalent to an author), and you should indicate the organisation (if any) behind the software, the location and the URL of the software’s website. See the examples below. You will often find reference information on the webpage.

Reference management software

Uppsala University Library recommends the free software Zotero, which you can download online and is free to use. The library at BMC will help you with any problems. They also offer courses, but the software is so easy to use that most people don’t need it. You can find helpful introductory material at:

Zotero quick start guide

Om Zotero (in Swedish)

Compiling the reference list: examples and tips

If you use a reference manager to add references, it makes sure that your citations look right, both in the text and in the reference list, and that the numbering and sorting of the references are updated when you change, delete or add citations. You will need to learn how to import citations (Zotero has a browser plug-in that makes this easy), how to insert citations into your text (Zotero has plug-ins for MS Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice and Google Docs to do this), and how to choose the style you want to use for your citations (the style determines, for example, whether the citations are displayed as author names and years or as numbers in the text). Zotero comes with several different pre-installed styles, but you can install many others via Zotero’s settings.

Much of the following text describes what reference managers arrange automatically based on the style you choose for your citations, but which you must organise yourself if you do not use a reference manager. However, remember that even if you use a reference manager, errors can occur, so check your reference list to make sure everything is formatted correctly.

In the reference list, list all the published publicly available work you have referenced, no more and no less. Do not include oral references. For the same author, use the chronological order of the articles. If you wish to cite your sources by number rather than by name + year, number them in the same order as you have them in the text. If you put the author’s name in brackets, you should organise the reference list alphabetically by author.

Again, there are different systems for organising the information. You can choose a different format for individual works than the one below if it is more common in journals in your field, as long as you include all the information below. For articles, list all authors, year of publication, the title of the work, the journal in which it was published, volume and pages. For books, list all authors, year of publication, title, edition (if any), publisher and place of printing. For single chapters in collections, also include the editors, the title of the collection and the pages of the cited chapter.

For non-paper journals, the volume and e-page or DOI (Digital Object Identifier) number are given, but the name of the journal must still be included. The examples in the next section provide more details on how to cite an article you read online.

For web sources that are not journal articles, you must provide the name of the person or organisation responsible for the website, a title of the work, the date the page was last modified (if available) and the date you downloaded the information.

Citations – examples

Journal articles

Principle: Surname initial(s) for all authors. Article title. Journal where it was published. Volume: pages (year of publication).

Gillespie U, Alassaad A, Henrohn D, Garmo H, Hammarlund-Udenaes M, Toss H, Kettis-Lindblad A, Melhus H, and Mörlin C. A comprehensive pharmacist intervention to reduce morbidity in patients 80 years or older: a randomized controlled trial. Arch Intern Med 169:894-900 (2009).
Abbott NJ, Patabendige AA, Dolman DE, Yusof SR, and Begley DJ. Structure and function of the blood-brain barrier. Neurobiol Disease 37:13-25 (2010).
Rowland M, Peck C, and Tucker G. Physiologically-based pharmacokinetics in drug development and regulatory science. Ann Rev Pharmacol Toxicol 51:45-73 (2011).

Journal without volume and page numbers (e-journal)

Wilmers CC, Getz WM. 2005. Gray wolves as climate change buffers in Yellowstone. PLOS Biology, DOI 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030092.

Books

Principle: Surname initial(s). Book’s title. Edition. Publisher: Place of publication, Year published.

Rowland M., Tozer T. N. Clinical Pharmacokinetics, Concepts and Applications. 3rd ed. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (1995)
Begon M, Harper JL, Townsend CR. Ecology. Individuals, populations and communities. 3rd ed. Blackwell Science, Oxford. (1996)

Chapters from books

Principle: Surname and initial of chapter author. Chapter title. I: Editor’s Surname, Editor’s Initial, editor(s). Book’s title. Place of publication: Publisher; p. page number (Year of publication).

Reidenberg M. M. Therapeutics as a Science. van Boxtel C. J., Santoso B., Edwards I. R. (Eds). Drug Benefits and Risks, International Textbook of Clinical Pharmacology. John Wiley & Sons Ltd: Chippenham, Wiltshire, UK. 1st ed. p 15–25 (2001).

Doctoral theses, reports etc.

Johansson A. 2003. Ph.D. Thesis. Design and Synthesis of Hepatitis C Virus NS3 Protease Inhibitors. Uppsala University.
Sandström B. Title of report. Technical report; Number; Publisher: Place of publication, date, pages
Medical Products Agency Sweden. Läkemedelsbehandling för glukoskontroll vid typ 2-diabetes – behandlingsrekommendation. Information from the Medical Products Agency. 2017;28(4):29–48.
The National Swedish Board of Health and Welfare. Nationella riktlinjer för hjärtsjukvård – Stöd för styrning och ledning. Article number: 2018-6-28. 2018. Available from: https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/nationellariktlinjerhjartsjukvard.

Software

R Core Teams. 2013. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL: http://www.R-project.org.

Web addresses

Medical Products Agency Sweden. Interchangeable drugs.
[2018/07/02], downloaded 2019/06/10.

Mendeley Ltd. 2019. Harvard Format Citation Guide. https://www.mendeley.com/guides/harvard-citation-guide, downloaded 2019/08/16.

Be consistent and use the exact same format for all references. Here are some details to consider:

Thoroughly check where to use full stops, commas and colons.
Use abbreviated or full journal names, not a mixture. Journal names are abbreviated according to a standard (see PubMed or Scifinder). If you do not know a journal’s standard abbreviation, print the full name of the journal.
For journals, do not write the word “volume” and do not enter the booklet number. Instead, write “11: 115-121” (not “volume 11(2): 115-121”).
In some reference formats, journal names and book titles are italicised, and volumes are bolded. If you choose such a format, be consistent.
The reference list should use the same language as the rest of the paper. However, the title of the work should be in the original language. For example, in Swedish, write “opublicerad rapport från Uppsala universitet”, and in English, “unpublished report from Uppsala University”.