Sarahcunningham87

References

Remember that when adding content about health, please only use high-quality reliable sources as references. We typically use review articles, major textbooks and position statements of national or international organizations. WP:MEDHOW walks you through editing step by step. A list of resources to help edit health content can be found here. The edit box has a built-in citation tool to easily format references based on the PMID or ISBN. We also provide style advice about the structure and content of medicine-related encyclopedia articles. The welcome page is another good place to learn about editing the encyclopedia. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a note. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:36, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Same as before. If you are not sure what is a secondary source please ask. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:57, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

I appreciate the help. I also studied the MEDRS guideline. I can understand why these guidelines are in place and appreciate the guidance. Thanks! --Sarahcunningham87 (talk) 03:06, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Citations

Hi Sarahcunningham87. As I noted at [{Talk:Vitamin D]], the pubmed ID is really important for us. First, if you just type, anywhere in WP, "PMID" and the pubmed ID, like this - PMID 19709382 - the Wikipedia software autoformats a link to the pubmed abstract there. Nifty. Very useful for discussing refs. Secondly, you can look at pubmed listing and quickly see what kind of source it is. For PMID 19709382, a quick glance abstract shows that this is a "primary" source as that is defined in the definitions section of MEDRS - it is a paper " in which the authors directly participated in the research or documented their personal experiences. They examined the patients, injected the rats, filled the test tubes, or at least supervised those who did. Many, but not all, papers published in medical journals are primary sources for facts about the research and discoveries made." Right? They tell you how many people they studied, what they did, what the results were, etc. Also, most pubmed listings (not this one, but look at PMID 19709383) have a section under the abstract called "Publication Types, MeSH Terms, Substances, Grant Support". If you unhide the contents, it will say "review" there if the article is a review; if it says "Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural" like PMID 19709383 does, this also means it is primary.

Pubmed actually has a "filter" for reviews. After you do a search, a list of filters will appear on the left, and if you select "review" there, Pubmed will show you only reviews. Nice.

Many articles about health or medicine have a header at the top of the talk page that has pictures of books and starts out saying: "Ideal sources for Wikipedia's health content are defined in the guideline ..." The Talk page of the Vitamin D article has such a header. It has a link in it to a preformatted pubmed search for reviews, based on the article title. Also handy.

OK, also... about formatting references.

There is a very easy and fast way to do citations, which often also provides a link that allows readers to more easily find the source being cited.

You will notice that when you are in an edit window, that up at the top there is a toolbar. On the right, it says "Cite" and there is a little triangle next to it. If you click the triangle, another menu appears below. On the left side of the new menu bar, you will see "Templates". If you select (for example) "Cite journal", you can fill in the "doi" or the "PMID" field, and then if you click the little magnifying glass next to the field, the whole thing will auto-fill. Then you click the "insert" button at the bottom, and it will insert a ref like this (I changed the ref tags so it shows):

(ref)Thieden, E; Philipsen, PA; Heydenreich, J; Wulf, HC (2009). "Vitamin D level in summer and winter related to measured UVR exposure and behavior". Photochemistry and photobiology. 85 (6): 1480–4. PMID 19709382.(/ref)

That takes about 10 seconds. As you can see there are templates for books, news, and websites, as well as journal articles, and each template has at least one field that you can use to autofill the rest. The autofill isn't perfect and I usually have to manually fix some things before I click "insert" but it generally works great and saves a bunch of time.

The PMID parameter is the one we care about the most as I mentioned above.

One thing the autofill doesn't do, is add the PMC field if it is there (PMC is a link to a free fulltext version of the article). you can add that after, or while you have the "cite journal" template up, you can click "show/hide extra fields" and you will see the PMC field on the right, near the bottom. If you add the PMC number there that will be included. The autofill also doesn't add the URL if there is a free fulltext that is not in PMC. You can add that manually too, after you autofill with PMID.

There you go.

Thanks again for wanting to work with the MEDRS guideline! Jytdog (talk) 03:41, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Ahhh...okay. I think I just had that moment of clarity about primary vs. secondary sources. That was where I was having the most confusion. I spent some time reading your post here and looking at the links. I really like that Pubmed filter for reviews. The primary vs. secondary source was the bit I had the hardest time wrapping my head around, but it's clear now. I appreciate you taking your time to help me. Is there a mechanism on here where I could run my next edit by you just to make sure it is good before posting? Then I think I'll get the hang of it. --Sarahcunningham87 (talk) 03:58, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

October 2016

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 1 week for abusing multiple accounts. Note that multiple accounts are allowed, but not for illegitimate reasons, and any contributions made while evading blocks or bans may be reverted or deleted. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may request an unblock by first reading the guide to appealing blocks, then adding the following text to the bottom of your talk page: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}.  ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 01:51, 30 October 2016 (UTC)