The International Child Neurology Association's (ICNA) aim with ICNApedia is to develop a comprehensive continually updated trustworthy resource in child neurology. This can only be made possible through collaborative content authoring. As an ICNA member there are several ways you can get involved in creating and maintaining this child neurology knowledge environment. A great way to start is by contributing articles to the ICNApedia Child Neurology Knowledge base . Before you start check whether the topic you intended to write on is already present. If so, you might want to edit the existing article than starting a new one.

ICNApedia Knowledge base (KB) employs a very strict granular access control to restrict article editing rights. If you are an ICNA member you would have already been granted EDIT rights. However your contribution would still be edited section editors and in certain special circumstances your edit rights revoked. You may use the wysiwyg editor provided to format your article. Please do not copy & paste from desktop editors for e.g MS Word since this will introduce lot of junk HTML which may interfere with the website code.

All author/editor contributions to the content will be acknowledged online. However please note that the content is meant to be continually updated and any contributed content is subject to further modification by bonafide editors. Although ICNApedia retains the previous 100 major revisions of the articles, contributing authors are encouraged to retain a copy of the content they contributed.

Starting a new article

If you want to start a new topic/article we recommend you first search for the article. If your article is found you can go ahead and edit it. If not you can go ahead and create it. Keep your articles at a reasonable length. Between 1500 and 5000 words is a good choice or less than 50KB worth of prose. Keeping articles to a reasonable size is important for ICNApedia's accessibility, especially for readers on slower net connections and mobiles.

When articles grow beyond this amount of readable text, they will be divided into smaller articles to improve readability and ease of editing, or may be edited to make it more concise. The headed sub-section should be retained, with a summary of what has been removed under a separate header inorder to retain context. Each article on a subtopic should be written as a stand-alone article should have its own introduction, subheadings and references.

When an article is on a broad topic and is long with many sub articles, the main article should be fairly balanced on its treatment of the subtopics without putting undue importance on any one subtopic. If a particular subtopic ends up quite long, then it is an indication for having a separate article of its own.

ICNApedia Manual of Style

Purpose and Style ICNApedia serves as a comprehensive clinical resource tailored for child neurologists, both in practice and in training, rather than as a traditional encyclopedia of child neurology. It adopts a distinct style that diverges from conventional scientific papers. Citations should favor secondary sources, such as review articles, over primary sources like original research trials.

Layout Effective articles commence with a brief lead section that introduces the topic. This is followed by a well-structured body and concludes with standard appendices, including references and related articles. The lead section should precede the first header, eliminating the need for an "Introduction" heading. Occasionally, the initial section following the lead may provide a broad summary of the topic and can be titled "Overview," although more specific section titles and structures are generally preferred.

Paragraphs Paragraphs should balance readability and idea development, being neither excessively long nor too brief. Overly lengthy paragraphs should be divided, ensuring that the resulting segments maintain a coherent focus. One-sentence paragraphs, being unusually emphatic, should be used sparingly and rarely constitute the entirety of an article.

Some paragraphs may be more effectively presented as tables or lists. In such cases, they should be rewritten as prose or converted to their appropriate formats. Guidance on the proper use of tables and embedded lists is available.

Lecture Notes Style Text may also be written in a lecture notes style using bulleted lists for clarity and emphasis. This format can enhance readability and facilitate quick reference to key points.

Headings Headings enhance clarity and structure within articles, as reflected in the table of contents. They are hierarchical, with the article's title using a level 2 heading. Therefore, start the text with a level 3 heading and follow it with progressively lower levels to h4.

Subsequent heading levels should use just “bold” formatting. Use bold and italics sparingly. Bold should be used for headings and then sparingly for any other emphasis. Too much bold makes text harder, not easier, to read and differentiate. A “summary style” an organizational style that is similar to news style except that it applies to topics instead of articles and mostly lead sections instead of lead sentences is the preferred style of writing for ICNApedia KB. A news style could be used while contributing blog articles to ICNApedia News/Announcements.

Authors should determine whether extensive subtopics warrant separate pages or inclusion within a single page. Headings should not contain links.

Try to avoid long sentences that have several embedded clauses. Authors should take care to avoid text duplication or redundancy which unnecessarily complicates a manuscript. A short focussed article would be more appreciated and useful to readers.

Paragraphs: Paragraphs should be short enough to be easily readable but long enough to convey and idea. Short paragraphs allow readers to quickly scan through the content one paragraph at a time. It is also important to keep the sentences short. An optimal line length is consdered to be between 60 and 70 characters. long lines make it more difficult to focus and to correctly jump from one line to the next. If lines are too short, the eye is tempted to back and forth too quickly, breaking the reader’s rhythm and possibly skipping essential words. Paragraphs should contain key words to highlight the content. Use lists to structure the content and provide images to focus the reader on important aspects and avoid the use of jargon.

Images When applicable, articles should be illustrated with relevant images. Place images strategically where they closely relate to the accompanying text. If the relevance of an image is not immediately clear, draw attention to it within the text.

Spell checking: Please pay careful attention to spellings. The WYSIWYG editors provided in ICNApedia has spell check functionalities. Alternatively you can use online dictionaries like Dictionary.com, Ask Oxford e.t.c and online spell checkers such as SpellCheck.net,GingerSoftware, or your browser's built-in spell checker. 

Copyright & Attributions

Articles must adhere strictly to ICNApedia's copyright policies. Whether something is copyrighted is not always apparent. Write in your own words whenever possible, and ask for help about the fair use of images and text when you need it.

ICNApedia content is licenced under the CC-BY licence model. Authors continue to own copyright to their contributions, but they liberally license their contributions for reuse and modification. However the licence model does require proper attribution. If an ICNApedia KB article is constructed through summarizing reliable sources, but there is a paragraph or a few sentences copied from compatibly-licensed or public-domain text which is not placed within quotations, then putting an attribution footnote at the end of the sentences or paragraph is sufficient.

Attribution is required for copying content in the public domain and under various licenses. See Compatible license, COPYPASTE, PLAGIARISM, FREECOPYING, PD-notice, and CC-notice.

Public domain resources such as textbooks may be used to add content to an article provided such material is properly attributed. A public domain source may be summarized and cited in the same manner as for copyrighted material, but the source's text can also be copied verbatim into a ICNApedia article. If copying material verbatim from public-domain or compatibly-licensed sources ICNApedia editors are encouraged to indicate so in the version Note for the article citing the source.

Compatible Licence

Under very narrow circumstances, copyrighted images and text can be used without permission under the “fair use” clause of US copyright law. Limited use of copyrighted text, for example, can be done without requiring permission from the rights holders for such things as scholarship and review

Citing references

Online citation generators:There are several online citation generators available. We would recommend the resource from University of Kansas hosted at http://sumsearch.org/cite/ ( Please use the blog format output if you are copy & pasting ). https://www.citethisforme.com/ is another resource.

Other suitable formats are (see https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/07/ )

• Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article.Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. http://dx.doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyyy
• Harlow, H. F. (1983). Fundamentals for preparing psychology journal articles. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 55, 893-896.
• Scruton, R. (1996). The eclipse of listening. The New Criterion, 15(3), 5-13.

Citing ICNApedia wiki articles

ICNApedia is an e-resource. Hence an electronic-citation format should be used. The actual format will depend on the citation style that you are using. Please see below for some general guidance regarding citing ICNApedia articles

ICNApedia is collaboratively written. Hence any particular author or authors should not be cited. Often the stem of an article might be based on a published source which is then updated collaboratively. You can view the article review history for full details of sources and authors.

The citation should list the article title and ICNApedia, The Child Neurology Knowledge Environment and date accessed. Every article should be a separate citation. At the bottom of each article there would be a permalink which should be used as the URL for the article. Alternatively you may use the URL as shown in the browser window

If the citation style you are following request the full date and time of the article revision you are using although this may not be necessary if you are using the permanent link. However, the date and time of the last revision can be found at the bottom of every article under revision history.

Following are examples of how an ICNApedia article may be cited

APA Style Dravet Syndrome. (n.d.). In ICNApedia. Retrieved October 25,2015 11:10:03 from https://icnapedia.org/knowledgebase/topics/dravet-syndrome

MLA Style “Dravet syndrome.” ICNApedia: The Child Neurology Knowledge Environment, Inc. October 24, 2015. Web. October 25,2015 11:10:03

AMA Style ICNApedia contributors. Benzodiazepines. ICNApedia, The Child Neurology Knowledge Environment. October 24, 2015. Available at: https://icnapedia.org/knowledgebase/topics/dravet-syndrome Accessed October 25,2015 11:10:0

References

Iverson,C.(20090401). Citation. AMA Manual of Style. Retrieved 26 Jan. 2020, from https://www.amamanualofstyle.com/view/10.1093/jama/9780195176339.001.0001/med-9780195176339-div1-37