Wikipedia talk:Scientific citation guidelines

message: There is a request for comments at [ Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)#What does MEDRS cover? ].
At issue is whether the lead paragraph OF WP:MEDRS should remain...
:"Wikipedia's articles are not medical advice, but are a widely used source of health information. For this reason it is vital that any biomedical information is based on reliable, third-party, published secondary sources and that it accurately reflects current knowledge."
...or whether it should be changed to...
:"Wikipedia's articles are not medical advice, but are a widely used source of health information. For this reason it is vital that any biomedical and health information is based on reliable, third-party, published secondary sources and that it accurately reflects current knowledge."
This has the potential to change the sourcing policy from WP:RS to WP:MEDRS on a large number of Wikipedia pages, so please help us to arrive at a consensus on this issue. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:09, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  RfC announce: What does [[Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)]] cover? 

message: I made a minor modification in Convex curve. This article is now citing more than once a book (by Alfred Gray) which is also available online. The point is that the online version has one PDF file by chapter. Do we have to make one link to each PDF that is actually used, or is it correct to provide a link to the URL on which all the PDF can be downloaded (as I did) ?
Laurent.Claessens (talk) 12:57, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: As a general principle, I try to arrange the reference so that it is as easy as possible for someone to go look up that reference and verify the passage referenced. That would argue for linking to the actual PDF; right now I cannot tell which PDF out of the 60 or so that p.163 occurs in. --Mark viking (talk) 16:35, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I in general like to link to the HTML "landing page" that links to the PDF, if one is available.  If the HTML page lists multiple PDFs, you must be clear about which one is the correct one, perhaps by providing a chapter number.  Linking directly to the PDF is permissible too. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 20:15, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

text: A suggestion: pull all of your citation templates into their own "Sources" section, and then use  templates to create short cites that link to the full citation. One advantage of this is you avoid duplicating full citations (as has already been done in that article), and another is that it is easier to make all citations consistent. (The duplicated citations are not consistent.) Then each citation of a particular chapter can use Harv's  parameter to create a link to that chapter. Note: you could also link to Google Books, which gives the reader direct access to some of the pages.~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:05, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation of a list of pdf 

message: Where did this idea that general references should be placed at the beginning or end of paragraphs come from?  That just seems like more micromanaging of editors to me.  It may not be appropriate to place a general reference inline at all, let alone in a specific position in the paragraph.  If the idea is to identify general references to the reader, then a much better approach is to list them under a specific section, or a subsection of the bibliography if the article has one. SpinningSpark 19:13, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: For one thing, the WP:DYK rules require that each paragraph have at least one inline citation. So if an article is going to be linked at DYK, giving a general reference inline is a good idea. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:26, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think DYK should be driving Wikipedia guidelines.  In any case, it does not say anything about general references, and it only says one cite per paragraph as a rule of thumb.  It does not say anything about positioning in the paragraph. SpinningSpark 20:50, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  General references at beginning/end of paragraphs 

message: A number of articles on planetary science or discoveries by spacecraft cite press releases or media reports, rather than the actual journal publication. (I.e. stories about the published paper, rather than the paper itself.) Is there a guideline about which is preferred for Wikipedia?
Fcrary (talk) 22:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Citation of press releases/popular media stories versus journal articles