Reference Number citations are a method of documenting sources using a number in the text of the document that references a numbered bibliographic citation in a list of works cited.

There are two basic systems for organizing Reference Number citations in a document: alphanumeric and numbered references.

For reference number citations, repeated citations in the text are assigned the same number.

Example: Numbered references:

Nothing seemed so certain as the results of the early studies (1). It was precisely this level of apparent certainty, however, which led to a number of subsequent challenges to the techniques used to process the data (2). There were a number of fairly obvious flaws in the data's aspect: consistencies and regularities that seemed most irregular, upon close scrutiny (1,2).

1. Smith, J.P. Studying certainty. Science and Culture 9 (1989) 442.
2. Jones, M.R. Cooking the data? Science News 8 (1990) 878.

To write Reference Number intext citations, and a numbered reference list in order of the appearance of the citations in the document::

  1. Prepare the word processing document, inserting Access Keys at the citation positions in the text.
  2. Click Generate, Citations for document. The Generate Citations dialog will display.
  3. Click the In-text citation option for Reference Number, and set the options to your preference for displaying the number in the text of the document.
  4. Set the Reference List Options to the correct publishing style for the full bibliographic citations, and make sure the option for Order of Appearance in document is checked. See the example below.
  5. Click OK.
Citation replaces the Access keys in the document with Reference Number citations, and writes a numbered Reference List with the full bibliographic citations for the works cited.

For ICMJE numbered cites, with a numbered reference list in order of the citations in the text:

If you have included specific page references in your Access keys, Citation will ignore these for Reference Number citations.

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