Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Resources

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WikiProject Medicine


Project Page
WPMED Newsletter and signup
Manual of style (medicine)
Identifying reliable sources (medicine)
List of participants
Popular pages
Assessment (Log)

How to help:
Article alerts and resources for editors
Articles listed for cleanup or deletion
Patrol recent changes and sort stubs
Join the hunt for sources
Requested articles

Categories:
Project

Articles by quality and importance

Guidelines

Shortcut
An introductory video about how to edit Wikipedia and medicine.
  • Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and has a distinct style that may take some time getting used to.
  • It is important that articles use the best sources and content is given due weight. Different from scientific papers, Wikipedia medical and health content is preferably sourced to secondary sources over primary sources. Citing a review article is preferred over an original trial.
  • To get you started and to explain why this is important here are a number of guides and guidelines:
WP:MEDRS    WP:MEDMOS
Reliable Sources (medicine)     Manual of Style (medicine-related articles)
WP:MEDCOI    WP:MEDHOW
Conflicts of Interest    How to edit
Our guides complement Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines and take great care to explain why they are relevant.


Article Alerts

Did you know

Articles for deletion

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Proposed deletions

  • 10 Mar 2026 – Trinity Hospice, Blackpool (talk · edit · hist) was PRODed by JBW (t · c): No evidence of notability. Sourced only to a dead link on the hospice's own website & a routine listing on the Charity Commission's website, & searches failed to find any significant coverage in any independent source.

Categories for discussion

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Templates for discussion

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Redirects for discussion

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Good article nominees

Featured article reviews

Good article reassessments

Peer reviews

Requested moves

Articles to be merged

Articles to be split

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Articles for creation

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Recent changes

Tasks

Maintenance tasks

Determine the quality of these articles
Last updated by Reports bot 4 years ago [Refresh]

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These pages are potentially in the WikiProject's scope.
Last updated by Reports bot 5 years ago [Refresh]
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Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Tasks/SuggestBot

Other tasks

Requests

Requested articles

Templates

Article-related

Category:Medicine templates contains all templates used on medicine-related articles.

  • {{WPMED|class=|importance=}} - Placed on talk pages of medicine-related articles and used to assess articles.
  • {{reqphoto|medical subjects}} - Used on talk pages to request that photographs be added to the article.
  • {{med-stub}} - Used on stub articles (here is the complete list)
  • {{Medref}} - Used to indicate an article in need of adequate references.
    • {{Medref|section|{{subst:DATE}}}} - Used to indicate an section in need of adequate references.
  • {{Medicine}} - The bottom navbox template to be used on articles about broad disciplines of medicine.
  • {{medical advice}} - placed around requests for medical advice on talk pages (box ends with {{cob}}).
  • {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Navigation}} - transcludes the navigation template shown to the right.
  • {{Reliable sources for medical articles}} - updated template providing links to recent reviews, for use on Talk pages

Inline with article text

Infoboxes

See also: Category:Medicine infobox templates

WP:Infoboxes have been created for a number of article types including:

For other editors

the welcome video
  • Welcome messages (all of these should be substituted onto a user's talk page):
    • {{subst:WPMED welcome}} ~~~~ – Welcome message for new Wikipedians (with invitation to join us) – newish, with video
    • {{subst:Welcome medical student}} ~~~~ – For welcoming new editors who appear to be students associated with a course
    • {{subst:Student}}~~~~ – For welcoming new editors who appear to be students associated with a course, with more detailed advice
  • [[File:New medical editor.ogv|thumb|right|thumbtime=2:59|320px|Welcome to Wikipedia]] A video that can be transcluded onto the pages of new users.
  • {{subst:RSPlease}} ~~~~ – User Talk page request to use MEDRS sources

For WP:MED contributors

  • {{User WPMed}} – Userbox for members of this WikiProject.
  • {{WikiProject Medicine topicon}} – For members of this WikiProject. Adds a topicon to your user page.
  • {{User MedLat}} – Userbox for those who understand Medical Latin (Babel-compatible; just add |MedLat to your Babel template)

Wikipedia Library


The Wikipedia Medical Library
The Wikipedia Library grants Wikipedians who have 500+ edits, account age 6+ months, and meet some other criteria free access to certain academic journals. As of February 2021, it provides instant access to 26 journals, and you can request individual access to journals such as the BMJ, Cochrane Library, and Science Direct (SD includes access to The Lancet).

Finding images

Main page: Wikipedia:Pictures for medical articles

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 as many of the images are NC licensed and therefore not compatible with Wikipedia.

Community members interested in creating images

We also have a few people who are interested in creating images for Wikipedia including:

Requested images

  • ...

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.

Finding sources

More information Source, url ...
SourceurlComments
TRIP Databasehttp://www.tripdatabase.com/This resource is useful to find references suitable for Wikipedia as it breaks the literature down into secondary sources versus primary sources. It searches the Cochrane Library and many other databases containing systematic reviews, medical guidelines, and evidence-based synopses among others. TRIP Answers is a website related to the TRIP Database which aims to answer clinical questions directly.
Pubmedhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/A large collection that includes more than 22 million citations and abstracts and tens of thousands of links to the full-text articles. If desired by the user, search results can be limited to show only review articles, full-text articles freely available to the public, or studies from some 120 "Core Clinical" journals (they are all English-language journals). Results are also sortable by publication date. The PubMed identifiers (PMIDs) can be used with the "cite" button found at the top of the edit window. On the left side of a Pubmed abstract you will find filters for "Article types" and you can select "Reviews" there; you can also filter by "Text availability". Pubmed abstracts also have a field called "Publication Type" at the bottom, that shows how Pubmed has classified the study; check to see if the source is a review or not, before using it.
Centers for Disease Control and Preventionhttp://www.cdc.gov/Reliable source for public-domain information, especially for infectious diseases. Also has a library of copyright-free images.
NCBI bookshelfhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/booksFree access to over 700 health-science textbooks
Google Scholarhttp://scholar.google.com/A Google search portal limited to scholarly work (including not only medicine, but also legal articles and patents). Allows easy access to many University and Institutional online collections (with proper affiliation). A useful feature of Google Scholar is "Cited by...", showing who else has cited a particular paper.
Google Bookshttp://books.google.com/Makes available free, limited views of a number of medical textbooks. ISBNs are available, aiding referencing.
DynaMedhttp://dynamed.ebscohost.comSubscription required. Provides evidence-based topic overviews and summaries, with plenty of links to the full text of key published clinical evidence, including international guidelines. It also includes live links to PubMed. Trial access may be obtained here.
Emedicinehttp://emedicine.medscape.com/Also known as Medscape Reference. Free, but registration is required. Not the best source of content, with concerns that advertising affects its reliability.
Cochrane collaborationhttp://www.cochrane.org/Perhaps the foremost evidence-based group. Complete access to their collections is available in many countries.

Also produces the Cochrane Library.

NICEhttp://www.nice.org.uk/The guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the UK.
PLoS Journalshttp://www.plos.org/A collection of open-source scientific journals, including PLoS Medicine
SIGNhttp://www.sign.ac.uk/The guidelines from the Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network in the UK.
World Health Organizationhttp://www.who.int/mediacentre/Fact sheets from the WHO.
EB medicinehttps://www.ebmedicine.netExcellent reviews of emergency-medicine topics. Issues more than 3 years old are freely available to the public.
USPSTFhttp://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.orgThorough evidence-based evaluations of medical topics by the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)
PTSDpubhttps://search.proquest.com/ptsdpubs/indexManaged by the VA's National Center for PTSD on the Proquest platform, this robust search engine provides citations and abstracts to the peer-reviewed PTSD literature. Not limited to combat trauma. Previously known as "PILOTS".
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Project Page
Manual of style (medicine)
Identifying reliable sources (medicine)
List of participants
Popular pages
Press and research
Statistics

Departments:
Classes editing
Editor outreach
Research proposals
Task forces
Translation project

How to help:
Article alerts
Articles for cleanup
Nominations for deletion
Orphaned articles
Requested articles
Resources for editors
Stub sorting
Patrol recent changes

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.

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:

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