[Solved-Mostly] The Vancouver Styles are not correct according to my College guidelines

herbgeek

I tried zotero about 3 years ago and couldn't get it to work properly. Today I installed again and it just works. I'm using http://www.zotero.org/styles/vancouver-brackets It is not quite right but I can save myself sooo much time. Thanks Guys!

The Vancouver Styles are not correct according to my College guidelines(Paramount College of Natural Medicine)
They say they use Vancouver but it appears a little different to all 13 current Vancouver styles you have so far.

They want it like this:
"#. Author of article AA, Author of article BB, Author of article CC. Title of article.
Abbreviated Title of Journal. year; vol(issue):page number(s)."

"#. Author A, Author B. Title of article. Abbreviated Title of Journal [format]. year
[cited year abbreviated month day];vol(no):page numbers[estimated if
necessary]. Available from: Database Name (if appropriate). URL."

"#. Author A, Author B. Document title. Webpage name [format].
Source/production information; Date of internet publication [cited year month
day]. Available from: URL."


So for examples we have:
1. Gillespie NC, Lewis RJ, Pearn JH, Bourke ATC, Holmes MJ, Bourke JB, et al. Ciguatera in Australia: occurrence, clinical features, pathophysiology and management. Med J Aust. 1986;145:584-90.

2. Leroy EM, Telfer P, Kumulungui B, Yaba P, et al. A serological survey of Ebola virus infection in central African nonhuman primates. J Infect Dis [abstract]. 2004 [cited 2005 Jun 30];190(11):1895. Available from: ProQuest. http://www.umi.com/proquest/.

3. Australian Insitute of Health and Welfare. Chronic diseases and associated risk factors [document on the Internet]. Canberra: The Institute; 2004 [updated 2005 June 23; cited 2005 Jun 30]. Available from: http://www.aihw.gov.au/cdarf/index.cfm.

In the body the citations should be in brackets i.e.
Ebola is a non human virus(2).

I've looked at the csl files and tried to figure out how to change it myself but it's too big a learning curve right now.
Could someone please create a csl file that matches the above.

Thanks
herbgeek

adamsmith

we follow the uniform guidelines best as we can:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html
it's just not possible to add CSL styles for individual universities (unless someone from that institution supplies the style).
I don't see much in terms of differences to Vancouver, though?

herbgeek

Just short date, as far as I can work out. I tried to get one of our lecturers to take a look but he just pointed me to endnote

DWL-SDCA

Unless Paramount College has developed it's own EndNote style, using EndNote will not be helpful. I looked at the Vancouver (and similar) styles provided with (and online for) EndNote and none of the styles exactly match the PCNM requirements.

I'm considering a study on individual university citation styles. As @adamsmith has said, there are too many of them. I suspect that I will have trouble if I try to find out _why_ the specialized style exists with only very minor differences from a "standard" style. I suspect that no one knows with certainty. This strikes me as a kind of institutional passive-aggressive conduct. Simply tallying the number of institutions with unique styles would be tedious but simple to do. What would be interesting is understanding why.

Having a unique style may not be so bad for long-term faculty but new faculty will need to learn a style that is useless for preparing manuscripts for publication. Even long-term faculty will always need to use a different style when they write for external publications or when they collaborate with authors at another institution. Why force students to use a style that will be useless after they graduate? The inconvenience is quite a price to pay for whatever notion that led someone to develop a unique citation style.

Rintze

I suspect that I will have trouble if I try to find out _why_ the specialized style exists with only very minor differences from a "standard" style.

Perhaps because some of the "standard" styles charge significant fees for access to their guidelines? E.g. APA soft-cover is $30, CMoS is $65, and MLA is $22 a copy.

fbennett

Writing instructors working in committee can also get embroiled in fruitless internal turf battles over trivial aspects of style.

(This is not a reference to personal experience, of course, and any resemblance to events real or imagined is purely coincidental.)

herbgeek

PCNM is not big enough to have these turf battles. This is what they say:

"At PCNM, we use the Vancouver style of referencing system. The Vancouver style was first defined by a meeting of medical journal editors in Vancouver, Canada, in 1978.
These guidelines follow the principles given in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and editing for biomedical publication published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) in 2004 and the American Medical Association Manual of Style, 9th edition, 1998. These publications constitute authoritative international guides to Vancouver publication standards and style."

so maybe it's just an old version of Vancouver.

adamsmith

but they insist on that specific version? Vancouver actually has a fair number of "can" provision - which include the way the number is displayed in text, whether or not an issue number is used, and the full date vs. year for journals.

herbgeek

So far yes, it does seem that it's their way or full marks for referencing are not given. :-(

We will see what happens with my next paper.

@fbennett "purely coincidental...."
Really?

herbgeek

Hah!!!

My poking and prodding, with your help (both in this thread and with your 13 Vancouver styles), seems to have caused them to look at their style and they plan to release a new set of guidelines soon!

I've got a preview copy and some of the differences are gone.
[document on the Internet] becomes [Internet]
Long date is now acceptable
DOI is now included if available
No longer have to crop after 6 authors and use et.al. except in the text

Citations in the text have to be in round brackets(1) still :-(

Thanks Guys

DWL-SDCA

See the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors website:
http://www.icmje.org/manuscript_1prepare.html

The Uniform Requirements style for references is based largely on an American National Standards Institute style adapted by the NLM for its databases. Authors should consult NLM’s Citing Medicine for information on its recommended formats for a variety of reference types. Authors may also consult sample references, a list of examples extracted from or based on Citing Medicine for easy use by the ICMJE audience; these sample references are maintained by NLM. References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in parentheses.

The ICMJE refers users to the NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, 2nd edition at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/?amp=&depth=2

Look at the Zotero NLM styles. One of them is likely to closely match what you need.
http://www.zotero.org/styles
See also:

http://editor.citationstyles.org/searchByName/

herbgeek

They have chosen to follow referncing by Queensland University Library http://www.library.uq.edu.au/file/2496519/download/2538357

herbgeek

Many thanks to DWL-SDCA, I just found the Visual CSL editor and created what I needed. http://editor.citationstyles.org/visualEditor/
That was easy!

I thought I had to do it in the csl text files hence the request for someone else to do it (too big a learning curve)

Now just hope it works and if it doesn't I know how to fix it.