Constant Content

Hi
Does anyone have experiences to share on general customer preferences regarding referencing sources. Have you seen a preference for inline citation, versus listing sources at the end of the article?

In an effort to reduce wordiness, I would like to omit inline citations in my health article. For example, I would like to omit ‘according to…’ in this line: “90,000 people are waiting for kidney transplants, according to the NIH …”

The same article contains brief mention of other health statistics and information from reliable sources like the CDC, Harvard, and the Mayo Clinic. (The article does not contain any direct quotes.)

If I omit inline citations, can I supply a list like the following at the end of my article? Or, do I need to be more specific, including page title and date accessed, etc.?

Does This Work?
Sources:
Centers for Disease Control
National Institutes of Health
Mayo Clinic

I checked the submission guidelines; but I didn’t see the answer there.
Many Thanks

No - use the inline citations because they bring credibility the article. Think about it - how often do you read articles on the web (or in a newspaper) that cite sources at the end of the article? This is real life, not school.

Lets get off the "According to" bandwagon for just a minute. There are many, many other ways to reference that line. How about...

"Research data from the NIH notes that approximately 90,000 people are waiting for kidney transplants."

"And the kidney transplant list keeps getting longer. As of February 2011, the NIH notes that roughly 90,000 people are currently waiting for transplants."

You do not need a page title and date accessed. I would presume that you could include a "References" at the end of your article, but I would think it would be much simpler to change around your wording to include references within the article itself. References at the end of an article always leave a bad taste in my mouth like I'm reading a high school research paper instead of a well-researched and professional article. It's just something to think about.

Thanks, your advice is helpful and very much appreciated. Fond Regards