User:CFCF/sandbox/16

 Guidelines and Policies
 * Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and has a distinct style that may take some time getting used to.
 * It is important that we only use the best sources and that we give them due weight. Setting us apart from scientific papers we prefer secondary sources over primary sources. We'd rather cite a review article than an original trial.
 * To get you started and to explain why this is important we have a number of guides and guidelines:
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 * Reliable Sources ||&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;||Manual of Style
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 * Conflicts of Interest||&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;||How to edit
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 * Our guides complement Policies and guidelines and take great care to explain why they are relevant.
 * Conflicts of Interest||&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;||How to edit
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 * Our guides complement Policies and guidelines and take great care to explain why they are relevant.

 Essays Over the years our members have produced a number of different guidance essays which try to help readers understand specific aspects of Wikipedia. The most important ones

 Images There are many ways to find images for articles, from Commons to...

  The Wikipedia Medical Library The Wikipedia Library is a resource for anyone who want to use Wikipedia or to do research to help expand and improve Wikipedia. Specialised resources for Medical editors coming soon


 * Need help finding sources?: Help:Find sources
 * Need help finding your local library?: Find your library
 * Found a source that you can't access? Check out the: Resource Exchange &emsp;&emsp;Or try an Interlibrary loan

This page outlines external resources useful for writing medicine related articles. It complements Reliable sources (medicine-related articles) which explains how to determine ideal sourcing.

For a one-page handout on how to edit Wikipedia's content see: WP:MED/How to edit

Useful resources
Other useful Search Engines include:


 * NHS Evidence: Search portal for health and social care produced by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for NHS England. Includes a one-stop search engine covering a wide range of sources, including the Cochrane Library, British National Formulary, and UK and international guidelines. Much of the content of NHS Evidence is free to view, but access to certain sections (e.g. many full-text journals and the databases AMED, BNI, CINAHL, EMBASE, Health Business Elite, MEDLINE and PsycINFO) requires a NHS Athens username & password – see the NHS Athens eligibility criteria here
 * Prodigy Knowledge http://prodigy.clarity.co.uk (previously known as Clinical Knowledge Summaries - CKS) is aimed at clinicians in primary care. It provides reliable evidence-based information and practical "know how" about the common conditions managed in primary care.
 * EMBASE: A high-quality medical index that often generates better results than PubMed. It is proprietary and requires a paid subscription.
 * CINAHL: A proprietary index focusing on nursing and allied health care. It requires a paid subscription.

Images
Most images from the internet are copyrighted and should not be used in Wikipedia.

The NIH has an search engine for open images here. Use with care.

Non-suitable images

 * Medlineplus : even though it is a US government source, it uses images that may be copyrighted by others.
 * Other sources in the ".gov" domain may use images from istock photos, and such images may not be in the public domain.

Historical documents
Documents published before 1923 are, in most cases, not copyrighted. While many of these documents are outdated, they can still be of great utility in supplementing "History" sections of certain medical articles. Also, historical images can still depict symptoms of diseases, normal anatomy, and other features quite accurately.

Possible sources of useful images and text of historical interest include:
 * Images from the History of Medicine (IHM) and, more generally, the digital collections maintained in the National Library of Medicine: Care must be taken in choosing materials here since most, but not all, content is in the public domain.
 * The Pierre and Marie Curie University has an important digitalized collection of documents useful for writing articles about the history of science (especially French). Its "Charcot collection" specializes in medicine (particularly neurology) and has many valuable images available.
 * The Library of Congress U.S. Historical, Cultural Collections and the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog: Both of these sources contain medical and non-medical images and other potentially useful media files. Again, great care must be taken in choosing items to use since not all content is in the public domain.
 * "Images of Surgery" is a resource containing a number of historical images and depictions of surgical procedures across time.