References for Healthcare Blog Content?

[danielreyes]

Hey everyone,

We have a couple B2C medical/healthcare clients we produce content for and I was wondering what the industry stance is when it comes to giving references at the end of a blog, assuming there were no statistics or direct quotes used in the content.

A lot of our content is written via research on a specific condition/treatment and doesn't really dive deep into specific medical nuances. Things like risks, recovery timelines, questions to ask, etc. are written about mostly. Still, should we be providing general references at the end of blogs to sites like WebMD, Medscape, etc.

Thanks for any input!

[EGOL]

In general, if you are writing about information that is commonly available on many websites, then that information can be considered to be "common industry knowledge" - and most authors would not use citations.   Facts that would likely be in the body content of an introductory college textbook would also be considered as "common industry knowledge".

However, if you are stating specific information that might only be available from one or a few sources, then a citation is a proper thing to do.  Also, if you are giving facts or advice that you feel it is important to give others credit or responsibility, citations are good there too.

The above is what I generally do for writing content for a specific industry.  I also tend to use more citations where parts of my writing approach the limits of my firmly confident knowledge.

You are obviously doing research and visiting sites that you think would be superior to your own.  What is their practice on citations?  That might be a guide for you too.