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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Australian 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	Download the output style file
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

May T. Isolation is not the answer. Nature. 2004 Jun 10;429(6992):603.

A journal article with 2 authors

Miroshnichenko AE, Kivshar YS. Applied physics. Polarization traffic control for surface plasmons. Science. 2013 Apr 19;340(6130):283–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Osawa M, Anderson DE, Erickson HP. Reconstitution of contractile FtsZ rings in liposomes. Science. 2008 May 9;320(5877):792–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Whitfield CW, Behura SK, Berlocher SH, Clark AG, Johnston JS, Sheppard WS, et al. Thrice out of Africa: ancient and recent expansions of the honey bee, Apis mellifera. Science. 2006 Oct 27;314(5799):642–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wilson DA. Forensic Procedures for Boundary and Title Investigation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2008.

An edited book

Foth M, Brynskov M, Ojala T, editors. Citizen’s Right to the Digital City: Urban Interfaces, Activism, and Placemaking. Singapore: Springer; 2015. XXVII, 259 p. 60 illus., 16 illus. in color.

A chapter in an edited book

Fliss DM, Gil Z. The Subcranial Approach to the Anterior Skull Base. In: Gil Z, editor. Atlas of Surgical Approaches to Paranasal Sinuses and the Skull Base. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2016. p. 139–52.

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 Australian Family Physician.

Blog post

Andrew E. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Bigger Is Better After All. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/bigger-better-after-all/

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. Earth Resources Information Satellite System Act. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1977 Jan. Report No.: B-181426.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

LaVertu DJ. An Exploratory Approach to In-Trinity® for Fall Prevention [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 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

Drucker J, Lipton E, Haberman M. Trump’s Family Still Benefiting From Businesses. New York Times. 2017 Mar 31;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	Australian Family Physician
ISSN (print)	0300-8495
Scope