Training in reference management software--a part of new medical informatics workshops in Pakistan.

Background: Researchers in Pakistan can increase writing productivity, reduce errors in manuscripts and improve quality of their papers by hands-on workshops on bibliographic reference software.

Methods: A workshop was conducted in an interactive tutorial format using an overhead projector to show screenshots of software at each step. Our Workshop included: starting the Endnote program (www.endnote.com); manually entering a reference of a journal article; searching and importing references from PubMed; inserting a reference in Microsoft Word document in a journal-specific format; essentials of journal article formatting; and the ethics of respecting other peoples of intellectual effort by proper citations and avoiding plagiarism.

Results: A post-workshop test was administered to assess whether instructional objectives were attained. All the participants passed the post-workshop multiple choice questions and 85% rated the workshop as good, very good or excellent.

Conclusion: A workshop on reference formatting in research writing is useful to promote high quality research work. We recommend holding workshops twice a year on research article formatting and reference software at medical colleges in Pakistan and other developing countries.