Referencing sources or documents

[sarawilcox]

We do not recommend referencing sources in public-facing content. We have not seen a user need for references. Including them may cause confusion or get in the way of users navigating and understanding the information on the page.

References may be needed in professional-facing content.

The following guidance is from the NHS Digital style guide.

references to documents

References to documents should be easy to understand by anyone, not just specialists. They should follow the style guide.

When writing a reference:

• do not use italics
• use single quotation marks around titles
• write out abbreviations in full: ‘page’ not ‘p’, ‘Nutrition Journal’ not ‘Nutr J’
• use plain English. For example, use ‘and others’ not ‘et al’
• do not use full stops after initials or at the end of the reference

If the reference is available online, make the title a link and include the date you accessed the online version.
For example: ‘Corallo AN and others. ‘A Systematic Review of Medical Practice Variation in OECD Countries’ Health Policy 2014: volume 114, pages 5-14 (viewed on 18 November 2014)’

[sarawilcox]

GOV.UK blog post: Document references and footnotes: how do you write yours?

[jakestar7]

Just sharing some information from the Pathways Training Team in the Transformation directorate for the use of references in our content as requested.

• Context: We create and distribute training material on the NHS Pathways clinical decision support software used by 111 and 999 providers nationally. Because some of our content is clinical in nature, or references secondary literature to inform and reinforce the content at hand (for example, expertise or coaching framework models) we use references in some documents. All of our documents are presented through MS Word or PowerPoint and accessed by providers using FutureNHS (I am aware that HTML format is preferred and have presented this information to the team, it is unlikely that such a switch will be made). I have been working to harmonise disparate approaches in documents to have the same style consistently as well as continue towards making documents accessible, hence asking for guidance.
• System: Having consulted with the above, and being aware of precedent in the team I am advocating for a Harvard style system. This allows us to reference secondary sources in text without stopping the reader or the flow of information while identifying that information has come from a secondary source. This is then added to a reference list at the end of the document to give the full reference should the reader wish to consult the secondary source. Bibliographies are also used to identify information that has informed writing but that is not directly referenced in text (for example, to inform one's understanding of health conditions).
• Illustrative examples: I have included some examples below, including justification and approaches in our internal style guide that I have mocked up pending peer review. None of these examples are a perfect best practice, but an illustrative example of where we are now and why I want things to be improved and have a consistent style to which we can abide.

- This image shows in-text references used to illustrate the pervasivity of allergies and anaphylaxis (I appreciate that the health writing needs to be updated to remove references to "suffering from").

- This image shows a typical reference list as it stands, with websites that are referenced in the text are then highlighted in a list at the end of the document. Even here you can see the conflation between a reference list and further reading.

Referencing style guide.docx - This is information I've pulled together for the team based on my experience in tertiary education and the extant guidance that is referenced on the NHS Digital style guide above, and information on the NHS Digital Service Manual. This has not been peer reviewed or sent to the wider team yet, but it is illustrative of the approach I would like to take.

• User research: We currently do not have any user research in this area, with my focus more on professional standards in ensuring that where secondary sources are used they are referenced, and we do so in a consistent manner - it has not been driven by service users.

I hope this information is useful, should you want any clarification, further examples or discussion please let me know.