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Health: Study Skills & Referencing

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Referencing in BU Harvard

Referencing BNF

To reference the British National Formulary:
The guidelines on the BNF (via NICE) have this page which talks about referencing. 
 
In a reference list in BU Harvard, this would look like:
Reference:
Joint Formulary Committee (JFC), 2022. Etanercept [online]. London: BMJ Group and Pharmaceutical Press. Available from: https://www.new.medicinescomplete.com/#/content/bnf/_414565811 [Accessed  1st August 2022]
 
Citation:
(Joint Formulary Committee [JFC] 2022) - first time of citing, then (JFC 2022) for all succeeding citations.
 

Referencing multiple drugs from the BNF

For each page about a specific drug, you should have a different reference in your reference list.

If the references are all from the same year, then they should then be labelled a,b,c etc so that it is clear what you are citing.

So you reference list may look like this example:

Joint Formulary Committee (JFC), 2021a. Fampridine [online]. London: BMJ Group and Pharmaceutical Press. Available from: https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drugs/fampridine [Accessed  1st August 2022]

Joint Formulary Committee (JFC), 2021b. Mivacurium [online]. London: BMJ Group and Pharmaceutical Press. Available from: https://www.new.medicinescomplete.com/#/content/bnf/_350715754 [Accessed  1st August 2022]

Joint Formulary Committee (JFC), 2021c. Tizanidine [online]. London: BMJ Group and Pharmaceutical Press. Available from: https://www.new.medicinescomplete.com/#/content/bnf/_414565811 [Accessed  1st August 2022]

Joint Formulary Committee (JFC), 2022. Etanercept [online]. London: BMJ Group and Pharmaceutical Press. Available from: https://www.new.medicinescomplete.com/#/content/bnf/_414565811 [Accessed  1st August 2022]

Your in text citations for these examples would be:

The first time BNF is cited:

(Joint Formulary Committee [JFC] 2021a)

And then

(JFC 2021b), or if there is only one article from that year, (JFC 2022)

Accessing the BNF

 You may access the BNF either through NICE, or through Medicines Complete (access via the A-Z list on the library area on Brightspace).

The only difference will be the url at the end of your reference – all the other information will be identical for either way of accessing it.

We recommend using the BNF via Medicines Complete however, as it is easier to find the date of when the page was last updated.