The 'Right' Reference Style for Medical Journal Articles

Welcome back!

I happened to read Barbara Gastel's post titled 'What is the Right Reference Format?'. Interesting read.

"Different journals have different formats for citing references in text," she writes. Read her blog to get an idea of what she means.

She understands that it might have been easier to use one standard referencing format across different journals. But in reality, different journals use different styles. So what do you do as an author?

Read the instructions to authors carefully. Read some examples from the journal to get a hang of it.

Another thing you could try is this. Use a referencing library software for your next project. You can then change the referencing style with just a click of a button.

When you submit to the journal, you may have to send a document in plain text format. But you can always save a copy with the hyperlinks intact and change the style using the software if you ever need to submit the same article to another journal.

Medical Writing in India: the 2013 Survey

We are at it again!

In 2008, I had conducted a survey on medical writing in India. Part of the survey was presented that year at the 68th annual conference of AMWA.

It showed that unlike in the West, the medical writers in India were incredibly qualified. Over 90% of them were from the life sciences background...something you do not see in US or UK.

Is the trend changing? Are more and more people with journalism background entering the field? Where do most medical writers in India work? Are most of them on staff jobs or working as freelance? How much does as average medical writer in India earn? Are most medical writers in India males or females? 

Help us find that out. Sauren and I are trying to figure out how the scenario has changed over the last 5 years. Please participate in this 10 min survey to help us understand the medical writing industry in the country better. 

Here's the form. You can fill it up from right here and submit if you haven't yet received an email from us. Please be very careful about not attempting this survey if you are not a medical writer in India.

Tip #2: 'Sight', 'Site', or 'Cite'?

The Author AID "Sentence of the Week" for this week was:

          When writing a journal article, be sure to site references correctly.

Reader's were asked to find at least 1 definite error in that sentence.

That got me thinking about publishing a post on the use of the three words, 'sight', 'site', and 'cite'. They all sound very similar but have totally different usages.


The correct word for the above example is 'cite', which means 'to mention' or 'to quote'. The correct sentence is:

         When writing a journal article, be sure to cite references correctly. 


'Site', on the other hand, means 'a place or location'. A 'website' is a location on the 'web' or the Internet.

The word 'sight' is used in relation to vision or seeing.

Here's an example:

         What a beautiful sight! This is a good site for a family picnic. I remember it being cited on a hiker's website. 

I hope you were able to detect at least 1 definite error in a sentence in this blog. If you did, I would love to hear from you.

About a Forthcoming Medical Writing Workshop

I was going through the Scientific Agenda for a medical writing workshop I am attending. Thought you might be interested to hear about it.

This workshop is part of the 28th ICON Meeting conducted by the Indian Cooperative Oncology Network (ICON). The workshop in on Friay, the 5th of April, 2013 at Mumbai. There are several sessions on:

• How to Write an Original Article
• Intricacies of Publishing
• PubMed Tutorial
• Workshop on Reference Management

Click on the link below to read the full agenda.

Scientific Agenda of the Medical Writing Workshop at the 28th ICON Meeting

Tip #1 Use a Citation Manager Software

In April this year, I am speaking to a group of oncologists in Mumbai about using reference software for their articles. Very few people in India currently use a reference software to manage their citations. But the trend is changing.

Last September I attended my first workshop on referencing software. Everyone present really loved the idea of having to do away with manual referencing.

Does working with reference and citations manually give you a headache? 

I use the EndNote library (ENL) citation manager. The price of the current X6 version is around 250 USD. It may sound like too much for a writer in India. But once you use it you will absolutely love it. You will forget manual referencing forever. That's for sure.

Some friends of mine use RefMan. They find that really helpful.

A friend of mine uses the free software Zotero and says it is equally good. I haven't used Zotero. Cannot comment on it.

Here's a tutorial about ENL that I found awesome. This is just a 7 min video. There are longer ones available on YouTube for those interested in the details.

Here's my medical writing tip #1. Use a citation manager and know the difference. If you cannot afford a paid software right away, start with a free software. Once you get the hang of it, you might want to use a paid one for the additional support it provides.

How do you manage your citations? Have you switched to a software or do you find manual referencing comfortable? What software do you use? If you are using a software to manage references, we would love to hear your experiences.

Medical Writing Workshop in Odisha

All India Medical Writers Association (AIMWA) recently conducted its first medical writing workshop in the eastern sector.

It was a two day workshop in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Public Health, Bhubaneswar (IIPH-B) with the support of the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR). The Indian Institute of Public Health is an initiative started by the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). It is a new institute...only about a couple of years into its existence in Bhubaneswar.

Dr Sanghamitra Pati of IIPH-B and I got to meet through the Author AID forum. Soon, we realized that both Dr Pati and I wanted to do something for our state, Odisha in the form of scientific writing workshop. While I was on a personal visit to Odisha last summer, she invited me to speak on "Writing a Scientific Manuscript and Getting Published". This was during a workshop on Research Methodologies at IIPH-B. It was short talk of about half an hour.

Ever since then we had been wanting to conduct a standalone scientific writing workshop at Bhubaneswar or Cuttack. Without a partial funding by ICMR, I am not sure we could have arranged for such a successful workshop.

IIPH-B offered its conference room as the venue. They also managed all the logistics. AIMWA helped in arranging for speakers on various topics.

The topics we touched upon during the 2-day workshop included:

• Medical Writing Basics
• Ethics in Scientific Writing
• Preparing for Publication
• Writing an Original Research Article
• Literature Search
• Referencing Styles and Software (demo)
• Writing a Narrative Review Article
• Writing a Case Report

We wanted to limit the seats to 25. But there was such an overwhelming response that we had to accommodate 40 participants. We hope to come back to Odisha again soon with a more extensive workshop that focuses on limited topics. 

Starting the New Year with a Medical Writing Workshop

This looks like a good start for a new year. Tomorrow I am going to Hyderabad for a 2-day medical writing workshops being conducted by Indian Society for Clinical Research (ISCR). The workshops are on 4th and 5th. There's an workshop on regulatory writing, one on ethics in medical writing and one on scientific manuscript writing.

I am conducting a workshop on 5th Jan on the basic skills of medical writing. This will be about the different forms of medical writing, planning to customize the writing as per the reader, how to carry out an effective literature search, how to organize the matter, and how to write and format the article. I will also be covering briefly about health writing for the web and some SEO tricks to use to get readers to read your article on the Web.

There are over 40 people who have registered for this workshop and I am hoping to have a good interactive session with them.

I also look forward to meeting some old friends at Hyderabad.

Recorded for the Webinar

The recording for the webinar for the medical writing festival went well last night. Joann was logged in from Pennsylvania, Jonathan from California and I  was logged in from Delhi. We recorded a promotional video for my webinar and also the presentation on Medical Writing in India.

The webinar goes LIVE on 28/9/11 at 7:30 PM Indian time. Jonathan and I shall be there to answer any questions that the participants might have. If you cannot watch it at that time or want to watch it again, you can watch the ON DEMAND REPLAY too.

I am hoping I can attend all the webinars. There are over a dozen of them lined up. There are different webinar packages to choose and there is the a la carta option too.

We will see you at the Medical Writing Festival. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Scientific Writing Talk at IIPH, Bhubaneswar

I have been speaking on cancer in different states including my home state, Odisha. But this was a new beginning for me...talking on medical writing to my home crowd.

It's good to know about the new Indian Institute of Public Health at Bhubaneswar. The institute offers PGD course in Public Health Management. IIPH, Bhubaneswar was organizing a workshop on 'Biostatistics and Research Methodology' this June.

I spoke on 'Writing a Scientific Manuscript and Getting in Published.' There was also an introduction to AIMWA and its membership drive. I look forward to more opportunities of spreading the word about Medical Writing in the eastern states of India. Currently, the hubs of medical writing in India are at Bengaluru, Mumbai, Gurgaon and Ahmedabad. I do not see much medical writing activity in the east.