Citing sources protocol

This protocol is a draft. It has not yet been accepted as protocol and may be incorrect or poorly cited. Please do not use this in your work until it has been accepted.

Please see #protocols on Slack to discuss this protocol further.

This protocol describes how to use citations when writing protocol or resources for the wiki. There are three types of citation:

• Internal citations link to other pages on the wiki
• External citations link to pages elsewhere on the web
• Text-only citations consist only of text, with no link

You can also make several citations to the same source.

How to create an internal citation

To create a citation to another page on this wiki, you should use the following syntax:

{{cite|text of the reference|internal|page name}}

For example, if you want to use the text "Guide on how to write protocol" to link to writing protocol protocol, you should write

{{cite|Guide on how to write protocol|internal|writing protocol protocol}}

and the resulting citation will look like this.

How to create an external citation

To create a citation to a page elsewhere on the web, you should use the following syntax:

{{cite|text of the reference; Accessed: YYYY-MM-DD|external|url}}

For example, if you want to use the text "World Health Organisation" to link to https://www.who.int, which you accessed on the 30 January 2020 you should write

{{cite|World Health Organisation; Accessed: 2020-01-30|external|https://www.who.int}}

and the resulting citation will look like this.

When citing an external source, you should make sure to include the date accessed, as sources outside of our control might change over time.

Note that your citation text cannot have a line break in it, as this breaks the external linking code.

How to create a text-only citation

To create a citation to a non-internet source, you should use the following syntax:

{{cite|text of the reference|nolink}}

For example, if you want to use the text "Strunk and White" with no link, you should write

{{cite|Strunk and White|nolink}}

and the resulting citation will look like this.

How to repeat a citation to the same source

To create a second citation to a source you already referred to once, you should make the first reference as above, and use the following syntax for the subsequent citations:

{{cite|text of the reference}}

For example, if you already cited "Strunk and White" as in the previous section , you should write

{{cite|Strunk and White}}

and the resulting citation will look like this .

How to create the references section

By default, the references section will appear at the end of the article. If you want it to appear elsewhere, you can include the following text:

<references/>

This creates a reference section that includes all of the citations above it. You can have multiple references sections; if you do, each will have only the citations created since the previous references section.