Jawad Hashim, Faisal Rahim, Ali Yawar Alam.
Training in reference management software – a part of new medical informatics workshops in Pakistan.
J Ayub Med Coll Abottabad Jan ;19(2):70-1.

Background: Researchers in Pakistan can increase writing productivity, reduce errors in manuscripts and improve quality of their papers by hands-on workshops on bibliographic reference software. Methods: A workshop was conducted in an interactive tutorial format using an overhead projector to show screenshots of software at each step. Our Workshop included:1 starting the Endnote program (www.endnote.com); manually entering a reference of a journal article;3 searching and importing references from PubMed; inserting a reference in Microsoft Word document in a journal-specific format;4 essentials of journal article formatting; and5 the ethics of respecting other peoples of intellectual effort by proper citations and avoiding plagiarism. Results: A post-workshop test was administered to assess whether instructional objectives were attained. All the participants passed the post-workshop multiple choice questions and 85% rated the workshop as good, very good or excellent. Conclusion: A workshop on reference formatting in research writing is useful to promote high quality research work. We recommend holding workshops twice a year on research article formatting and reference software at medical colleges in Pakistan and other developing countries.

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