How to format your references using the American Family Physician citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Family Physician. 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

Smaglik P. Climate change expert stirs new controversy. Nature. 2000 Sep 7;407(6800):7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gutnisky DA, Dragoi V. Adaptive coding of visual information in neural populations. Nature. 2008 Mar 13;452(7184):220–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Komarova NL, Levy DN, Wodarz D. Synaptic transmission and the susceptibility of HIV infection to anti-viral drugs. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2103.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Pierce NW, Kleiger G, Shan SO, Deshaies RJ. Detection of sequential polyubiquitylation on a millisecond timescale. Nature. 2009 Dec 3;462(7273):615–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dimond B. Legal Aspects of Occupational Therapy. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2010.

An edited book

Jin H, Sciammarella C, Yoshida S, Lamberti L, editors. Advancement of Optical Methods in Experimental Mechanics, Volume 3: Proceedings of the 2014 Annual Conference on Experimental and Applied Mechanics. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. IX, 421 p. 390 illus., 297 illus. in color. (Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series).

A chapter in an edited book

Leung CB, Wang Y. Influences of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese Literacy Instruction. In: Leung CB, Ruan J, editors. Perspectives on Teaching and Learning Chinese Literacy in China. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2012. p. 49–60. (Multilingual Education).

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 American Family Physician.

Blog post

Andrew D. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Is It Safe To Wash My Hands, Doctor? Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/is-it-safe-to-wash-my-hands-doctor/

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. Review of the Policies and Procedures of the Office of Education in Administering Contracts Awarded for the Purpose of Studying or Evaluating Educational Programs. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1971 Apr. Report No.: B-164031(1).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Hariharan SB. The Structure of the Blue Whirl: A Soot-Free Reacting Vortex Phenomenon [Doctoral dissertation]. [College Park, MD]: University of Maryland, College Park; 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

Landler M, Risen J. Mineral Wealth In Afghanistan Tempts Trump. New York Times. 2017 Jul 25;A1.

In-text citations

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

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	American Family Physician
ISSN (print)	0002-838X
ISSN (online)	1532-0650
Scope