ABSTRACT
The author of this article deals with key words and references, analyzing their significance for scientific research. Key words are those which most accurately identify key ideas of the published document. They should be provided below the abstract and should fully represent the content of the paper. Articles are recognizable by their key words and thus available to the public. They are used also in creation of secondary publications and data bases, domestic and foreign, on published papers, but are important in searching the literature as well. A special attention has been paid to using standardized key words - descriptors in biomedicine. Vancouver Requirements oblige researchers to use descriptors from the Thesaurus of Medical Subject Headings of the American National Library of Medicine. The author decribes its structure, rules and principles which must be applied by researchers. Regarding the item of references, it is associated with several phases of scientific research: planning the research; identifying the topic; research, itself; gathering, usage and storing of data; citation of used literature in certain parts of published paper and list of references at the end of the paper. Reference citation is an obligatory part of published articles. It provides communication among the authors and binds scientific papers and scientific knowledge. Good scientific practice and ethical principles of scientific research concern reference citation as well. This paper gives definitions and explains certain items concerning reference citation. A special place has been given to ways, principles and rules of citation, which are in accordance with methodology of scientific research and generally accepted requirements. Vancouver Requirements represent the world standard in biomedicine concerning the form, content and appearance of manuscripts submitted for publication. These requirements concern reference citation as well. The author analyzes the Vancouver Requirements and their examples of reference citation, deals with the necessity of gathering certain data, their order, writing and importance of punctuation. Further on, the author concludes the following: it is of great importance that authors should cite all the relevant literature they have used when writing the paper (foreign and domestic); each citation from the list of references must be cited in the text and each citation from the text must be listed in references; the citation must be complete, with all necessary and accurate data, so that each paper could be identified. At the end, the author analyzes the significance of reference citation for researcher himself, for the community and for the science generally speaking.