Hispanopedia:References

This page documents a convention of Hispanopedia. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, although it should be treated with common sense and occasional exceptions may apply. Changes made to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss your idea on the talk page.

This page is a style guide that describes how to add references to articles. Providing bibliographic sources when editing them is mandatory under Hispanopedia's policies, as clearly stated in Hispanopedia:Verifiability. This means that any material introduced that has been called into question may be removed by any user.

References to other works are a very important part of the literature of many professions; each of them has designed its own way of including this information in the text, and these have given rise to standardized citation formats. Since the verifiability of information is one of the unshakable principles of Hispanopedia, articles must cite sources to indicate the origin of their content.

Although it would be possible to include all the information about the source juxtaposed with the referenced text, the continual interruptions would make reading difficult; for this reason references are listed in a separate section, at the end of the text. To indicate precisely from which of the works included in the bibliography the information has been taken, there are two widely used methods; the most frequent in traditional literature, and still widely used in the humanities, is to use note calls; another, more common in scientific literature, is to mention in parentheses the author and year of the cited work by means of, for example, the so-called Harvard style. In either case, the parenthetical reference or footnote must make it possible to identify the cited work unambiguously in the references section.

Although the decision of an article's original author should be respected, note calls are the preferred system. Note calls, in particular, raise some technical problems, which are discussed in the Note calls section below. Remember that, in any case, the most important thing is to include all the information necessary for the reader to be able to find the original source easily.

The "References" section

All the works consulted must appear in the "References" section, detailed with enough precision for other readers and editors to be able to consult them easily. Although the necessary details are not always the same, an ISO standard (the ISO 690) establishes the most usual and widespread format for transcribing references. You can consult the complete standard at this site or in its updated version (year 2013), but the general principles are detailed here in a simple way.

At a minimum, to identify a work it is necessary to know its author, its title and the details of its publication. In the case of an article included in a journal, this also means giving the title of the journal, its issue number and the date of publication; in the case of a book, the publisher, the date, the place of publication and the ISBN number, if known. Other formats have other requirements.

Hispanopedia cannot cite itself; external references must always be provided. That is, other Hispanopedia articles cannot be used as references. Interlanguage links (also known as interwikis) should not be used to reference an article either, since Hispanopedia is a tertiary source.

A series of templates helps to remember what information is needed and to format it correctly; although their use is optional (you can always achieve the same result manually), it is recommended for new users to make sure they do not leave anything half done. The templates are the following:

Citing books

To cite a book, you can copy and paste the following code, fill in the parameters you can and then remove the ones you do not use:

{{cite book |last= |first= |author-link= |title= |url= |access-date= |language= |others= |edition= |year= |editor= |publisher= |location= |isbn= |chapter= |pages= |quote=}}

It is not always possible to obtain the information for every parameter, but some are basic. For example, to cite the first edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, the reference is as follows:

{{cite book |last=Marx |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Marx |title=Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. Band 1: Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals |year=1867 |location=Hamburg |publisher=Meissner |oclc=7423266}}

And the result would be:

Marx, Karl (1867). Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. Band 1: Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals (in Deutsch). Hamburg: Meissner. OCLC 7423266.

When citing books, it is recommended to include the ISBN identifier (if one exists) of the publication, in order to facilitate an unequivocal identification of the reference provided. In this particular case, since the book did not carry an ISBN, the reference to the catalog number of the Online Computer Library Center (known as "worldcat") has been added, which is very useful when there is no ISBN. Searches can be carried out on this page. In the case of works published using other alphabets, it is best to place the standardized transcription immediately after the original data; in any case, it is advisable to cite works in Spanish whenever possible.

For more parameters and more advanced uses of this template, see Template:Cite book.

Citing articles in publications

To cite an article published in a journal or newspaper, you can copy and paste the following code, fill in the parameters you can and then remove the ones you do not use:

{{cite journal |last= |first= |title= |year= |journal= |volume= |issue= |issn= |url=}}

For example, to cite the original article in which Watson and Crick first described the structure of DNA, the reference is as follows:

{{cite journal |last=Watson |first=James |author-link=James Dewey Watson |last2=Crick |first2=Francis |author-link2=Francis Crick |title=A structure for Desoxyribose Nucleic Acid |year=1953 |journal=Nature |volume=1 |issue=171 |page=737}}

And the result would be:

Watson, James; Crick, Francis (1953). "A structure for Desoxyribose Nucleic Acid". Nature. 1 (171): 737.

For more parameters and more advanced uses of the template, see Template:Cite journal.

Citing web pages

To cite an article published on an Internet page, you can copy and paste the following code, fill in the parameters you can and then remove the ones you do not use:

{{cite web |url= |title= |access-date= |last= |first= |author-link= |date= |format= |work= |editor= |publisher= |location= |language= |quote=}}

For example, to cite the article by Paul Roberts on WebTV, the reference is as follows:

{{cite web |url=http://www.pcworld.com/article/120050/webtv_virus_writer_sentenced_to_prison.html |title=WebTV Virus Writer Sentenced to Prison |access-date=July 15, 2010 |last=Roberts |first=Paul |date=March 15, 2005 |publisher=IDG News |language=en}}

And the result would be:

Roberts, Paul (March 15, 2005). "WebTV Virus Writer Sentenced to Prison". IDG News. Retrieved July 15, 2010.

For more parameters and more advanced uses of the template (including the prevention of broken links), see Template:Cite web.

Other citation templates

The citation templates mentioned above are three of the most used. However, there are several other citation templates that can be used to cite other types of works. For example, encyclopedia entries, conferences, videos or radio or television episodes. In addition, some very frequently cited works have their own citation templates. For example, the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, the Bible or the works of Tolkien. For a complete list of all available citation templates, see Category:Hispanopedia:Citation templates.

Structure of the "References" section

There is no consensus on how to group references and footnotes in an article, and for this reason a certain diversity can be observed in Hispanopedia's articles. A well-developed way of doing this is to create a single Notes section plus another single References section (second-level heading) that includes as subsections the different forms of reference information, for example by means of the following scheme:

== See also ==
* [[Article]]

== Notes ==
{{Reflist|group="note"}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

=== Sources ===
==== Books ====
List of books used as sources in this article. Using {{cite book}} is recommended.

==== Newspapers and publications ====
List of publications in specialized journals used as sources in this article. Using {{cite journal}} is recommended.

==== Online ====
List of external web pages used as sources in this article. Using {{cite web}} is recommended.

== External links ==
* [https://www.enlace.org Link]

A simplified version without notes, with only References and Bibliography, would be:

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== Bibliography ==
*{{cite book|1}}
*{{cite book|2}}
*{{cite book|3}}

Bibliographic references

The preceding sections explained how to organize the bibliography section at the end of the text. From here on, we will explain the two most common ways of indicating in the text which of the cited references is the source for a particular statement; in this way, even in the case of a dense and extensively documented article, the relationship with each of the bibliographic sources remains clear at all times. The two methods are note calls and Harvard-style references. Note calls use links to connect the text with the citation, and have the advantage of not taking up much space in the text. Harvard-style references include the most important information of the citation in the main text itself, letting the reader know directly the origin of the information, but have the disadvantage that the main text loses continuity.

Footnotes (note calls) and combining them with references

In addition to references, it is possible to insert clarifications to the body of the article as footnotes. Such clarifications are pertinent but are introduced through note calls so as not to overload the text, and their content can and should be referenced as appropriate (see Footnotes with references). It is recommended that they be kept separate from the references, in a separate section or subsection called Notes, which should be placed before the References section.

To introduce a reference of this kind, the following procedure should be followed:

Insert the comment or clarification within {{refn|group="note"|<Text>}} anywhere in the text. It is also possible by entering the following code: <ref group="note">Text.</ref>. If it coincides with a punctuation mark (period, comma, semicolon, etc.), place the cursor immediately after the mark.

If the reference must necessarily be inserted in the middle of the text and the call ends up too close to it (for example because it is in italics, as in control^[1], or because it is in capitals, as in TV^[2]), a thin space (not a normal one) can be added by means of   before the tag, like this: TV&thinsp;<ref></ref>; which will result in control ^[1] and TV ^[2] respectively.

The note will be displayed when the template {{Reflist|group="note"}} or <references group="note" /> is inserted in the "Notes" section or in the "Notes" subsection of the "References" section. In this way, references and notes can be separated and distinguished.

Notes can also have a name that identifies them, just like references, using the name= parameter. Do not forget to put it in quotation marks. Example: {{refn|group="note"|name="2011A"|<Text>}}. And it would be reused like this: {{refn|group="note"|name="2011A"|}}. (Please remember that the name of the reference cannot be a whole number, since the system does not accept it, and it must therefore contain at least one letter.) It is also possible by entering the following code: <ref group="note" name="example">Text.</ref>.

Finally, check whether the == References == section exists at the end of the article (for its correct placement, see Hispanopedia:Article structure), and verify that it contains the template {{Reflist}}. If not, create that section and include the template in it. When you save the changes, all the text contained between the <ref>...</ref> tags will be displayed in a suitable format in the "Notes and references" section.

The following example illustrates this technique, combined with the use of notes:

Venus is the second planet of the solar system in order of distance from the Sun,<ref group="note" name="distance">The distance between Venus and the Sun is 107 477 094 km.</ref> and the third in terms of size, from smallest to largest.<ref>{{cite book |first=Juan |last=Astro |title=Nuestro sistema solar |year=2002 |location=Buenos Aires |publisher=Emecé |language=es}}</ref> It is named in honor of Venus, the Roman goddess of love.<ref>{{cite book |first=Alicia |last=Ven |title=Introducción a la mitología romana |year=2008 |location=Barcelona |publisher=Alianza |language=es}}</ref>

This appears as:

Venus is the second planet of the solar system in order of distance from the Sun, and the third in terms of size, from smallest to largest. It is named in honor of Venus, the Roman goddess of love.

==Notes==
{{Reflist|group="note"}}
== References ==
{{Reflist}}

This code will result, in addition to the section heading, in the following:

Notes

---

References

---

Footnotes with references

If a note contains the <ref> tag inside it, it is necessary to use the templates {{refn}} or {{#tag:ref}}.

For example: {{refn|group="note"|A note.<ref>A reference inside the note</ref>}} or {{#tag:ref|A note<ref>A reference inside the note</ref>

Then, as with notes without references, the "Notes" section is created and the template {{Reflist|group=note}} is inserted.

If the footnote needs to have a name, in order to reference it more than once, the template parameter "name" is used; for example:

{{refn|group="note"|name="first"|A note.<ref>A reference inside the note.</ref>}}

Citing footnotes with references more than once

If the same note has to be cited twice, the following <ref> code is placed in the second one:

{{refn|group="note"|name="first"|}} or <ref group="note" name="first" />

How to cite the same work more than once

Sometimes, different parts of the same text can be supported by citing the same work. To avoid repeating the same code each time, the following technique can be used: the first time the work is mentioned, the full reference must be written, but its opening <ref> tag must be written as follows: <ref name="Name">, where "Name" is some name you wish to assign to that reference, so that it can then be called directly from other parts of the text. Please note that the name of the reference cannot be a whole number, since the system does not accept it, and it must therefore contain at least one letter; for example, it cannot be name="1234" but it can be name="1234a". Once this is done, it is possible to insert a citation to that work from any other part of the text by simply writing <ref name="Name" />. It can also be used without quotation marks, <ref name=Name>, but words containing letters that are not in the English alphabet do not work.

For example, if below the text we enter {{Reflist}}:

Fossils are the remains or traces of the activity of past organisms.<ref name="Oldman">{{cite book |last=John |first=Oldman |year=2009 |title=History of paleontology |language=en |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press}} </ref> These remains, preserved in sedimentary rocks, may have undergone more or less intense transformations in their composition (by diagenesis) or deformations (by dynamic metamorphism).<ref name="Oldman" /> The science that deals with the study of fossils is Paleontology.<ref>{{cite book |last=Juan |first=Belardo |year=2007 |title=Introducción a la paleontología |location=Barcelona |publisher=Búho |language=es}}</ref>

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

It will result in:

Fossils are the remains or traces of the activity of past organisms. These remains, preserved in sedimentary rocks, may have undergone more or less intense transformations in their composition (by diagenesis) or deformations (by dynamic metamorphism). The science that deals with the study of fossils is Paleontology.

References

---

The two letters "a" and "b" to the left of the first reference indicate that it was cited twice. By clicking on the letters, the reader can go directly to the different parts of the text where the work was cited.

If you wish to cite several scattered pages of the same printed text, whether a journal or a book, it is advisable to identify the source fully with {{cite book}} and {{cite journal}} in the Bibliography section, and then cite each page with {{sfn}} next to the information you wish to reference. This is only valid for printed texts with a year of publication; if a web page is used as a source, the system will not link the reference to the citation and each of its links will have to be referenced.

How to group all references in a list

The "refs" parameter of the template {{Reflist}} is used to list the references present in the article. The advantage of this method is that it makes the body text of the article easier to read and edit, since it is not so overloaded with the wiki code for references. It is done as follows:

{{Reflist|refs=
<ref name="name1">Reference 1</ref>
<ref name="name2">Reference 2</ref>
etc.
}}

Note calls are inserted in the text in the same way as to cite the same work several times: <ref name="name" /> Example:

Fossils are the remains or traces of the activity of past organisms.<ref name="Oldman2009" /> The science that deals with the study of fossils is paleontology.<ref name="Belardo2007" />

== References ==
{{Reflist
|refs=

<ref name="Oldman2009">{{cite book |last=John |first=Oldman |year=2009 |title=History of paleontology |language=en |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref>

<ref name="Belardo2007">{{cite book |last=Juan |first=Belardo |year=2007 |title=Introducción a la paleontología |location=Barcelona |publisher=Búho |language=es}}</ref>
}}

This gives the following result:

Fossils are the remains or traces of the activity of past organisms. The science that deals with the study of fossils is paleontology.

References

---

How to display references in several columns

If the article has a large number of references, it may be convenient to display them in two or more columns. To achieve this, it is enough to insert the desired number of columns (2, 3, 4) as a parameter of the template {{Reflist}}. For example, suppose the following code:

Deoxyribonucleic acid, frequently abbreviated as DNA (from the English ''DeoxyriboNucleic Acid''),<ref>{{cite book |last=Domínguez |first=Domingo |title=Introducción a la genética |location=Barcelona |publisher=Gedisa |language=es}}</ref> is a type of nucleic acid, a macromolecule that forms part of all cells.<ref name="González">{{cite book |last=González |first=Gonzalo |title=El código genético |location=México |publisher=UNAM |language=es}}</ref> It contains the genetic information used in the development and functioning of known living organisms and of some viruses, and is responsible for its hereditary transmission.<ref name="González" /><ref>{{cite book |last=Fernández |first=Fernando |title=La síntesis moderna |location=Madrid |publisher=Alianza |language=es}}</ref>

== References ==
{{Reflist|2}}

This code produces the following text:

Deoxyribonucleic acid, frequently abbreviated as DNA (from the English DeoxyriboNucleic Acid), is a type of nucleic acid, a macromolecule that forms part of all cells. It contains the genetic information used in the development and functioning of known living organisms and of some viruses, and is responsible for its hereditary transmission.

References

---

However, it must be borne in mind that the columns feature is not supported in all web browsers and the use of values greater than 2 is not recommended. See Template:Reflist/doc for more details.

Bundling references

Sometimes, reading the article is made easier if several references are grouped into a single call. For example, if there are multiple sources for a single statement and each of them applies to the whole sentence, then the sources can be placed at the end of the sentence as in this example,^[4][5][6][7] or they can be grouped into a single one at the end of the sentence or paragraph as in this other example.^[4]

Bundling is useful if the sources reference different parts of the preceding text or if all the sources reference the same text. There are several advantages:

• It helps the reader understand at a glance which source illustrates each point, maintaining the integrity of the source text.
• It avoids the visual clutter caused by multiple calls at the end of a sentence or paragraph.
• It avoids the confusion of having several sources listed separately after each sentence, with no indication of which source corresponds to which part of the text, as happens in this sentence.^[1][2][3][4]
• It makes it less likely that inline citations will be inadvertently moved when the text is modified, since each call clearly indicates which source supports which point.

There are different ways of formatting multiple citations in a single call, as illustrated below (in general, using bullets, line breaks, or condensing into a single paragraph). Efforts should be made to use a single style within an article for consistency.

The Sun is very large, but the Moon not so much. The Sun is also very hot.

Notes

---

Harvard style for references

Preference should always be given to the note call system, but this section is included as additional documentation. You can combine the Harvard style with note calls by using the template {{sfn}}, which does not require <ref></ref>, or {{harvnb}} with that code.

The Harvard style (also known as the author-date system) is a citation system developed by Harvard University and used today extensively in the physical, natural and social sciences. In the Harvard style, an abbreviated form of the reference (made up of the authors' surname and the year of publication) is inserted in the text immediately after the cited material; the full reference is found in a separate section, as we have detailed above.

The reference must contain enough information to locate the work consulted in the bibliography section; the page number in the original work is optional, though recommended. For example, to cite the book by Marx mentioned above, we could do the following:

According to Marxist theory, the primitive accumulation of capital appears in the trade that links communities whose form of production is not yet capitalist; it has its origin in the activity of buying and selling that pursues the obtaining of a profit, founded on the different conditions of production of different communities. Merchant capital is the first of the various forms (such as bank capital or rentier capital) that precede the development of industry (Marx 1867, p. 290).

Using the template {{harvnb}} in combination with the use of {{cite book}} in the bibliography creates an internal link from the citation to the book by the same author and year included in it. If {{sfn}} is used instead of {{harvnb}}, a footnote is created and the reference is shown in the respective section. This is the recommended form when the same source is used recurrently and you want to reference multiple statements or cite various pages.

There are some additional rules:

• if the name of the author of the reference is mentioned in the text, it is enough to specify the year in parentheses; another wording of the preceding example (using the template {{harvp}}) would say:

According to Marx (1867), p. 290, the primitive accumulation of capital appears in trade...

• if the cited source has multiple authors, both authors must be indicated if there are two (for example, "Watson & Crick (1953)" for the article mentioned above), or (if it is a work written by many authors) the first of them must be followed by the abbreviation et al. (which in Latin means "and others"; for example, "Friedman et al. (1976)" for the volume in which the mentioned text by Tobin appears);
• if more than one work published in the same year by the same authors is mentioned, a lowercase letter is appended to the year as an ordinal ("2000a", "2000b", "2000c", etc.);
• newspaper articles are cited by the name of the author, if it appears in the byline, or by that of the publication if no specific attribution is available;
• works published without a date are cited as "s.a." (sin año, "without year");
• in the case of a reissue far removed in time from the original publication, the latter can be specified in square brackets to help the reader understand the chronology of the publications; a modern reissue of Marx's text could be cited as "(Marx (1867) 1975)".

General references

A general reference is a citation to a reliable source that serves to reference the content, but that is not linked to a specific part of the body of that source (such as a page number or numbers) through a note call in the body of the article. General references are usually placed at the end of the article in the "References" or "Bibliography" section and are usually sorted alphabetically by the surname of the author or editor.

The appearance of a general references section is the same as that of the note calls and Harvard style for references sections. If there are sections for both specific and general references, they can be distinguished by means of separate sections such as "References" and "General references" or "Bibliography".

A general references section can be included in an article that will later use note calls throughout, even if those calls have not yet specified the origin of the information for the whole of the article's content. In underdeveloped articles, there is often a general references section even though no specific note calls have yet been added, frequently in the case where all the content of the article is based on a single source. The disadvantage of using general references is that in-text attribution is lost, unless the article is very short.

General references are usually worked on later by editors to convert them into note calls.

External links

The ==External links== section is placed after the references section, and offers books, articles and links to websites related to the subject that may be of interest to the reader, but that have not been used as sources for the article.

Numbered links

A URL surrounded by single square brackets will be displayed as a number in brackets leading to the page mentioned in the URL. For example, [https://es.hispanopedia.com/index.php?title=Hispanopedia:Referencias] will be displayed as [3]. Note that links of this type are placed after a period, as here. [4]

Text links

A Harvard-style reference can be displayed as an external link if the referenced work is available on the Web.

In-text attribution

In-text attribution is the type of attribution made within a sentence or material to its own source, in addition to an inline citation after the sentence. In-text attribution should be used with direct speech (the source's words in quotation marks or as a quotation), indirect speech (the source's words modified and without quotation marks) and close paraphrasing. It can also be used when you need to summarize briefly, in your own words, the position taken by the source. It avoids inadvertent plagiarism and helps the reader see where a position comes from. The citation should come after the attribution, usually at the end of the sentence or paragraph in question.

For example

John Rawls says that to reach fair decisions, parties must consider matters as if they were behind a veil of ignorance.^[2]

When using in-text attribution, make sure you are not committing an inadvertent neutrality violation. For example, the following implies parity between the sources, without making clear that Darwin's position is the majority view:

Charles Darwin says that human beings evolved through natural selection, but John Smith writes that we arrived here in pods from Mars.

Apart from neutrality issues, there are other ways in which in-text attribution can mislead. The following sentence suggests that The New York Times has made this important discovery on its own:

According to The New York Times, the Sun will set in the West tonight.

It is best not to saturate articles with too much information; it is better to leave that to the references. Interested readers can click on the reference and find out which newspaper published it:

In an article published in The Lancet in 2012, researchers announced the discovery of the new type of tissue.^[3]

Simple facts like this one can have inline citations to reliable sources as an aid to the reader, but normally the text itself is best left as a clear statement without in-text attribution:

By mass, oxygen is the third most abundant element in the Universe after hydrogen and helium.^[4]

What to do when a link in the references stops working

Main page: Help:How to recover a broken link

When one of the links in the "External links"/"Further information" section becomes invalid, it can perfectly well be removed from the article. On the other hand, the links in the References section (that is, links to sources used in writing the article) must be kept. In general, it is worth continuing to maintain the reference structure of the article; very often an active substitute can be found, and in most cases these substitutes are considered valid sources:

• A large proportion of web pages can be recovered from the Internet Archive. All you need to do is go to http://www.archive.org and search for the old link by its URL; alternatively, this can easily be done using the template {{Dead link}}. It is necessary to make sure that the new reference mentions the date on which the chosen version of the page was recorded by the Internet Archive.
• It can be helpful to look for the same content on equivalent pages, indicating that the first site was removed.
• If the link was only a "convenience" link to an online copy of material originally published on paper, but no appropriate substitute can be found, it is acceptable to remove the link but keep the reference.
• If the page cannot be found in the Internet Archive, it is possible to find recently deleted pages in Google's cache. It will not remain there for long, and there is no point in linking to it, but it can help to find the content, which may be useful for finding an equivalent page containing the same information.

If none of these strategies has been successful, do not remove the inactive references: record the date on which the original link was found "dead". Even in this state it indicates the sources used, and printed copies may still exist, or there is the possibility that the page will be added to the Internet Archive, since it keeps a deliberate delay of six months or more. Note also that while many printed sources end up obsolete or superseded, researchers continue to reference them.

How to request references

Citation needed!

If an article needs sources but you are not able to find them, you can tag it with the template {{Unreferenced}}. It is more useful to indicate the specific places that need references by adding to them {{Citation needed}} or {{cn}}, which can be placed in the same spot where inline references would go.

You can also leave a notice for the author of the unreferenced article. A brief comment to the author is advisable if the author is a veteran. For new authors, the user notice template {{subst:aviso referencias|article name}} can be used. The use of this template is always a consequence of the use of one of the two previous templates.

How to find articles that need references

If you want to help improve articles with this deficiency, you can visit this category, which groups all the articles that have been tagged with the template that requests them.

Citing Hispanopedia in other works

To cite Hispanopedia in other works, see Hispanopedia:Citing Hispanopedia. The tool Special:CiteThisPage is also available as an aid. Likewise, in the toolbox to the left of every article there is a link called "Cite this article" that leads to a list of possible ways of referencing the static version visible at that moment; for example, the article Multiculturalism, in its edition of January 28, 2006.

See also

• Citation templates
• Help:How to reference
• Hispanopedia:Citation overkill
• Hispanopedia:Reliable sources
• Hispanopedia:Verifiability