Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Unwarranted variation in citation output from tools
Comments concerning variations
[edit]"None of the available tools for Wikipedians purport to follow a traditional citation style." – That is because there is no such thing as one "traditional citation style". There are variations of citation styles used by various publications. In addition, there is no Wikipedia "house citation style". Hence there is no surprise that the various tools produce various outputs.
"Perhaps this is because Wikipedia citations tend to contain hyperlinks, the doi, and the PMID, which are valuable for an Internet-native publication but have less meaning for a traditional publication." – False many traditional publications are now routinely including dois and pmid links in the "enhanced" html and pfd versions of their articles.
I also take issue with the statement "WP:RefToolbar, which is what Wikipedia recommends". It is just a tool like any of the other tools, albeit it is easier to use than most.
There is considerable differences in formatting of the authors. The template filling tool follows the compact Vancouver system. It also uses a single author parameter which results in more compact template. This is an intentional variation. There is also variations in dates. Normally it is only necessary to specify the year. This would remove a much of the variation.
The difference in whether pmid or doi is included is not so much a function of what the tool is used what is input into the tool and where the data was obtained. The citation template filling tool obtains its data from PubMed. PubMed in turn often by not always has a doi for a publication. Hence the templates produced by the template filling tool may or may not have a doi. Conversely if a doi is feed to the WP:RefToolbar, it obtains its data directly from the publisher and therefore it does not return a pmid. Boghog (talk) 19:27, 24 March 2014 (UTC)