How to format your references using the African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine (PHCFM). For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Hanson B. Sumatra-Andaman earthquake. Learning from natural disasters. Introduction. Science 2005;308(5725):1125.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ewing RC, Macfarlane A. Nuclear waste. Yucca Mountain. Science 2002;296(5568):659–660.

A journal article with 3 authors

Halberda J, Mazzocco MMM, Feigenson L. Individual differences in non-verbal number acuity correlate with maths achievement. Nature 2008;455(7213):665–668.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Chen H, Wang Y, Wang Q, Li J, Yang S, Zhu Z. Bifunctional organic polymeric catalysts with a tunable acid-base distance and framework flexibility. Sci Rep 2014;4:6475.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Segura J, Hawkins CF. CMOS Electronics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005;

An edited book

Cowley SJ, Vallée-Tourangeau F, editors. Cognition Beyond the Brain: Computation, Interactivity and Human Artifice. London: Springer, 2013;

A chapter in an edited book

Talaulicar T. Corporate Codes of Ethics: Can Punishments Enhance Their Effectiveness? In: Brink A, editor. Corporate Governance and Business Ethics. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2011; p. 89–106.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine.

Blog post

Fang J. Hair from Ancient Mummies Reveals Peruvian Paleodiets [Homepage on the Internet]. IFLScience. 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30];Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/hair-centuries-old-mummies-reveal-peruvian-paleodiets/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Measuring Progress and Addressing Potential Privacy Concerns Would Facilitate Integration into the National Airspace System [Reissued on September 18, 2012]. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2012;

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Dao L-AT. Comparison of peripherally inserted intravenous catheter complication prevalence: Before and after changing a 96-hour routine replacement standard. 2017;

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Martin GS, Leland J. Worshiping the Bony Lady. New York Times. 2017;MB6.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

This sentence cites one reference ¹.
This sentence cites two references ^1,2.
This sentence cites four references ^1–4.

About the journal

Full journal title	African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine
ISSN (print)	2071-2928
ISSN (online)	2071-2936
Scope