The Ulutas Medical Journal p-ISSN 2149-0430 e-ISSN 2149-388X

Vancouver reference style: examples

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This journal uses the Vancouver style: references are numbered consecutively in the order they are first cited, shown in the text as Arabic numerals in parentheses, and journal titles are abbreviated as in the NLM Catalog (see the Instructions for Authors). "Vancouver" in medicine means the style described by the US National Library of Medicine (NLM): ICMJE recommends that references follow NLM's Sample References page and its style manual, Citing Medicine. All examples below are taken from those NLM sources or from real PubMed records, so you can check them.

Journal articles

The basic pattern is: Authors. Title of article. Abbreviated journal title. Year;Volume(Issue):pages.

Up to six authors – list them all:

Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002 Jul 25;347(4):284-7.

More than six authors – list the first six, then "et al.":

Rose ME, Huerbin MB, Melick J, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Regulation of interstitial excitatory amino acid concentrations after cortical contusion injury. Brain Res. 2002;935(1-2):40-6.

With a DOI – add it at the end. This journal asks for the DOI where available:

Zhang M, Holman CD, Price SD, Sanfilippo FM, Preen DB, Bulsara MK. Comorbidity and repeat admission to hospital for adverse drug reactions in older adults: retrospective cohort study. BMJ. 2009 Jan 7;338:a2752. doi: 10.1136/bmj.a2752.

Organisation as author:

Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group. Hypertension, insulin, and proinsulin in participants with impaired glucose tolerance. Hypertension. 2002;40(5):679-86.

Points to check:

  • As in all NLM examples, authors are written as surname followed by initials, without full stops (Halpern SD), and only the first word of the article title and proper nouns are capitalised.
  • Use the official NLM abbreviation of the journal title (search the NLM Catalog).
  • NLM's examples shorten page ranges by dropping repeated digits: 284-7, 40-6.
  • ICMJE asks authors to check that no reference is a retracted article, except when discussing the retraction; this journal has the same rule.

Books and chapters

Whole book: Authors. Title. Edition. Place: Publisher; Year.

Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.

Chapter in an edited book: Chapter authors. Chapter title. In: Editors, editors. Book title. Place: Publisher; Year. p. pages.

Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, editors. The genetic basis of human cancer. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2002. p. 93-113.

For a chapter, give the page range of the chapter you used.

Web pages and guidelines

For online material, NLM adds "[Internet]" after the title, the date you accessed it in square brackets ("cited"), and the address.

Whole website:

eatright.org [Internet]. Chicago: Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics; c2016 [cited 2016 Dec 27]. Available from: https://www.eatright.org/.

Part of a website (for example a guideline page on an organisation's site):

American Medical Association [Internet]. Chicago: The Association; c1995-2016 [cited 2016 Dec 27]. Office of International Medicine; [about 2 screens]. Available from: https://www.ama-assn.org/about/office-international-medicine

ICMJE asks authors to give direct references to original research where possible and to cite published articles rather than abstracts.

References in Turkish, Arabic or Chinese

Citing Medicine asks you to translate a non-English article title into English, put the translation in square brackets, and give the language of publication at the end of the reference. PubMed records of non-English articles already show the title this way, so the PubMed record is a good starting point.

Turkish article (from its PubMed record):

Karakurt D, Ede H, Turan Y, Gürel A, Ardahanlı İ, Sarak T. [Evaluation of the relationship between erectile dysfunction and epicardial fat tissue thickness and carotid intima-media thickness in patients with newly diagnosed hypertension]. Turk Kardiyol Dern Ars. 2020 Nov;48(8):746-53. Turkish. doi: 10.5543/tkda.2020.21290.

Chinese article (example given in Citing Medicine):

Ni H, Qing D, Kaisa S, Lu J. [The study on the effect of LBP on cleaning hydroxygen free radical by EPR technique]. Zhong Yao Cai. 2004 Aug;27(8):599-600. Chinese.

The same rule applies to Arabic and other languages. Copy the authors' names and the bracketed English title from the PubMed record where one exists, and check the journal abbreviation in the NLM Catalog.

Tools that format references for you

Reference managers can format your list automatically, but the result depends on the data you import.

  • Zotero is free and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Its plugins for Microsoft Word, LibreOffice and Google Docs insert citations and update the bibliography automatically. Its style repository includes "NLM/Vancouver: Citing Medicine 2nd edition (citation-sequence)".
  • Import by DOI or PMID where possible rather than typing references by hand. Crossref advises including DOIs in reference lists and offers a search service for finding them.
  • Always check the output against this page: look for missing authors, titles in capital letters, full journal names instead of abbreviations, and Turkish characters lost on import.

Sources

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