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*Physician Assistant Studies

Academic resources that support research, teaching, and learning in the field of physician assistant studies.

What's On This Page?

On this page you'll find the resources we recommend for citing, organizing, and using your resources. You will also learn more about AMA style the style that Physician Assistant Studies uses at MCPHS.

Helpful Tips

  • Are you working on an assignment?  Check the instructions for any specific citation requirements.  If you don't find any, reach out to your professor! 
  • The MCPHS Writing Center
    • The Writing Center is a great place to receive feedback about how you can improve your writing.  Their friendly experts can coach you through the process of drafting and revising essays, reports, presentations, personal statements for professional and graduate school—anything where clear written communication is important. They can help you with everything from presentation of ideas, to citation style, to grammar errors. Even before you start writing, the tutors are happy to discuss your ideas for a paper. Schedule an appointment with the Writing Center. Learn more about with the Writing Center and the process for scheduling an appointment in the MCPHS Writing Center LibGuide.
  • The Center for Academic Success and Enrichment (CASE)
    • CASE provides academic support services to students across all three campuses. CASE works with students to maximize their potential by introducing them to the strategies that will make them more efficient, effective, and independent learners. Reach out to CASE.

Using Your Sources: Quoting, Summarizing, and Paraphrasing

Summarize, paraphrase, and quote to include others' ideas in your own writing.

  • Summarize: Condense the information to a few general statements. Summarize when you find the same information in many sources. Summarize when one source provides a lot of context for your project.
  • Paraphrase: Put the information in your own words. Paraphrase when one idea is important but the exact wording does not matter. You will often find paraphrasing useful if multiple sources have similar information.
  • Quote: Use a small portion of another person's words, exactly as that person wrote or said them. Put quotation marks around the words or phrases you borrowed. Quote when information is unique to one source and is not easy to reword. Quote when one source uses especially compelling language.

AMA Style Resources

AMA Manual of Style, 11th Edition

The most recent edition of the American Medical Association's official guide to AMA style.

AMA Style Examples

Purdue Online Writing Lab: AMA Style

Purdue's writing center provides excellent examples and information on AMA citation style

 

Citation Managers

Citation managers are amazing tools that can assist you during the research process. Using citation mangers is a way for you to collect, manage, and organize citations for all the articles, books and other sources you find. You can use them to create reference lists in a wide range of styles, do in-text citations, and share articles and citations with colleagues.

The citation managers that MCPHS supports are Zotero and EndNote.

Quick Citation Tools

The Cite Button

Most of the Library's electronic resources can generate a citation for you. Check for the Cite Button or other Citation Tools in these locations:

  • In the menu to the right of an article/abstract.
  • At the top of the results list.
  • Under each citation in the results list.
  • At the bottom of an article/abstract page.

Citation Generators

Citation generators are useful tools for creating citations. Remember though, no citation generator is 100% accurate. Please double-check your citations against the handbook to be sure they are correct!

  • ZoteroBib
    • ZoteroBib is a quick, web-based citation generator provided by Zotero--no account or software installation needed.
  • CiteThisForMe
    • Great for creating one-off citations in a wide variety of styles, including AMA. You can also create an account and save bibliographies here.
  • Citation Machine
    • Standard online citation generator that walks you through the process of finding the information you need for a citation and then creating it.
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