Citation, an important aspect of medical content writing, is an acknowledgement in your text of reference that supports your work. It is a means to inform your readers that specific information in your content came from another source. It provides crucial information for your readers to locate the source and it is an ethical practice to give appropriate credit to the author of the original article.

Citation helps to avoid plagiarism by giving credit to information taken from other sources and not misinterpreting it as your own.

BENEFITS OF CITING YOUR ARTICLE

• It helps boost the credibility of your article.
• It helps you build a personal library of the resources you have used for information, which could be useful when you want to refer to it again.
• Your readers can access the original article with the help of citations and reference lists below your article.

HOW TO CITE AN ARTICLE

• An article can be cited using a variety of referencing styles, including Vancouver, Harvard, Modern Language Association (MLA), American Psychological Association (APA), Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), and American Medical Association (AMA) Style.
• The Vancouver and APA are the two most frequent referencing styles in medical and scientific writing. The two styles are quite comparable.
• The Formula for Vancouver style referencing is: Author(Full stop)Title of Article(Full stop) Title of Journal abbreviated(Full Stop)Year(1 Space)Month(1 Space)Day(Semicolon, No Space) OR Year(Semicolon, No Space)Volume Number(Issue/Part)(colon, No Space)Page Number(Full Stop)DOI.

• The Formula for APA style referencing is: Author(Full stop)Year(Full stop) Title of Article(Full Stop)Title of Journal (Comma)Volume Number(Issue/Part)(comma)Page Number(Full Stop)DOI.

Begin citing all references in your article. Good citation practice in medical content writing promotes credibility and helps to avoid plagiarism.

References:

1. Bahadoran Z et al. International journal of endocrinology and metabolism.2020; 18(2): e102622. doi.org/10.5812/ijem.102622