Cochrane Style Manual
Website addresses and links

In this section: Displaying website links | Adding website links in RevMan 5 | Formatting addresses (URLs) | Formatting displayed text

Links to websites may be displayed within text.

For example:

We thank Cochrane Hypertension (hypertension.cochrane.org) for their support.

Additional date are available from www.healthdata.gov.

Note that if a website is in fact a reference, it should be entered as a reference, not a link.

Links to websites should be entered in RevMan 5 using the Insert Link function. This offers two fields: the Address (URL) and the Displayed Text.

RevMan Insert Link Screen

Formatting addresses (URLs)

Copy and paste the URL from the website, but remove any unnecessary characters from the end of the URL.

For example:

https://www.researchinformation.info/news/digital-science-opens-russia-subsidiary?utm_source=adestra&utm_medium=RINewsline&utm_campaign=RI%20NL%20MAY17

Should be shortened to:

https://www.researchinformation.info/news/digital-science-opens-russia-subsidiary

Note: In this example the characters following the '?' are related to how you arrived at the link (in this case via a link in an email).

Always test any shortened URLs you enter.

Formatting displayed text

This text should display a shortened version of the URL, not the name of the website, unless the URL has to be very long, in which case do not use the whole URL as the display text, but instead consider using the title of the resource or other explanatory text.

Omit the 'http://' or 'https://' prefix from this field. Do not omit the 'www.' if it is present (although the address will most likely work without it), and do not add 'www.' if it is not included.

Correct Incorrect
heart.cochrane.org

Cochrane Heart

http://heart.cochrane.org

www.heart.cochrane.org

www.cochrane.org

Cochrane website

http://cochrane.org

cochrane.org

www.nih.gov/health-information

https://www.nih.gov/health-information

nih.gov/health-information

www.nih.gov

Section info
Contact
John Hilton (jhilton@cochrane.org)
Describe change
New page on formatting web addresses.
Change date
15 June 2017