General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Senator Paul Claims to Have Written Scientific Papers.... [View all]enlightenment
(8,830 posts)can be a footnote or an endnote - or even a bibliographic reference. Every field has their own standard. Footnotes are usually more common in the social sciences and humanities - the hard sciences, etc, generally prefer endnotes. Footnotes are annotated with superscript notation (usually), while endnotes can use superscript or parenthetical notation.
I'm using "usually" and "generally" because there are so many different styles. In my field we use Chicago Style - the grandmother of footnotes, so I'm familiar with it more than others.
I've never liked the hard science referencing because it doesn't seem to take me to the exact place something is discussed - sometimes it just seems like it is sufficient to say "it's in this article or this monograph", even if the article or monograph is fantastically long and the cite might be a single sentence buried somewhere in it. It's annoying.