John Kiernan's Facts and Files

This is a collection of data files and programs written by me (J. A. Kiernan) and made freely available for anyone to read or download.  There are also some links to other web sites that include related materials.  The information may be useful for students and resarchers in several disciplines, including medicine, allied health sciences, anatomy, neurosciences, histotechnology, pathology etc.  Bear in mind that this is not a peer-reviewed publication.  If you are reading this page you probably found one of the my website's data pages by way of a search with Google and then wisely clicked on the Go back to start of John Kiernan's home page  link, which is present on nearly every page.  You then arrived here by clicking on a link to this particular page.

How to  cite, copy or quote without getting accused of plagiarism

Since the early 1990s, students and researchers, worldwide, have been using the internet to collect information for use in written assignments such as essays, grant applications, laboratory reports, theses and manuscripts to submit to journals.  Some were dishonest; they simply copied and pasted text and pictures, printed them out and sent them in as having been produced by themselves.  For some years many evaded detection because their teachers had not yet learned about this activity.  Since about 2000, colleges and universities have responded by subjecting submitted documents to checkers such as Turnitin, which compare submitted text with material that's already on the web. The consequences of being caught are serious: typically automatic failure of the whole course, which can result in having to leave a professional or graduate program.  See here for a brief history of plagiarism; evidently this practice dates from about 80 AD!  

The rules for keeping your academic reputation safe are quite simple.

Don't copy and paste from web sites or from PDF files of books, papers etc. Write in your own words and provide references (citations) to show where you got the information. Computers and the internet have made all this very much easier than it was in earlier decades.

It may occasionally be necessary to quote verbatim (as from a definition in a dictionary or glossary, or a passage in a book or paper that you are going to evaluate critically).  If it's very brief (two sentences or less), enclose the piece in "quotation marks" (inverted commas) and follow with a reference.  For a longer item copied from a book, keep it as short as possible and provide the reference with the last sentence of your document's preceding paragraph. The literally quoted material ideally should be indented and in a smaller font than the main document. This is the style used by book publishers for more than a century.

Get the references (citations) right, so that a reader can find them.

Here are a three examples of statements that you might write, showing the correct ways to cite items from the internet. 

Statement
Astereognosis, which is "loss of ability to recognize objects or to appreciate their form by touching or feeling them" (Kiernan 2024) may be due to a destructive lesion in either the medial lemniscus or the cortex of the parietal lobe.
Reference
Kiernan JA (2024)  Glossary of neuroanatomical terms and eponyms. https://publish.uwo.ca/~jkiernan/neurowds.htm (Accessed 12-01-2024).

Statement
Dyes, especially the mixtures also used for blood films, and fluorochromes, including daunomycin, doxorubicin, Hoechst 33258 and quinacine, are used in techniques to show  chromosome banding patterns (Kasten 1981). These patterns are
"alternating dark and light bands on metaphase chromosomes, seen after staining with suitable dyes (e.g. Romanowsky stains, like Giemsa's and Wright's or with the fluorochrome quinidine. Regions rich in guanidine-cytosine appear dark because they stain strongly (C-banding) with Romanowsky stains, and bright (Q-banding) with quinidine; thymine-adenine rich regions appear light with Romanowsky stains (R or reverse banding) and dark (not fluorescent) with quinidine. Banding patterns are characteristic of specific chromosomes, thus allowing for karyotyping" (Dapson et al. 2023).
References
Dapson RW, Horobin RW & Kiernan JA (2023) Glossary of staining methods, reagents, immunostaining terminology and eponyms. https://biologicalstaincommission.org/bscglossary.html  (Accessed 12-01-2024).
Kasten FH (1981) Methods for fluorescence microscopy. Ch. 3 in Clark, G ed. (1981) Staining Procedures, 4th ed. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, pp. 39-103. ISBN: 0683017071.

Statement
The words formaldehyde, formalin and paraformaldehyde identify different substances but they are often wrongly used in publications.  For clarification, see Kiernan (2000).
Reference
Kiernan JA (2000)  Formaldehyde, formalin, paraformaldehyde and glutaraldehyde: What they are and what they do. Microscopy Today 08-1, 8-12.  https://publish.uwo.ca/~jkiernan/formglut.htm (Accessed 12-01-2024).

The (Accessed [date]) item for an internet reference is required by genuine peer-reviewed journals because web pages may be changed, moved or deleted.  
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This page updated January 2024