Research and Writing Guides

Writing a paper? Don't get lost.

English 日本語 Deutsch

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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
1.
Edgerton D. The charge of technology. Nature. 2008 Oct 23;455(7216):1030–1.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Chang F, Peter M. Cell biology. Formins set the record straight. Science. 2002 Jul 26;297(5581):531–2.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Burghes AH, Vaessin HE, de La Chapelle A. Genetics. The land between Mendelian and multifactorial inheritance. Science. 2001 Sep 21;293(5538):2213–4.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
1.
Heinisch G, Rosenfeld H, Knapp JM, Gordin H, Lutcavage ME. Sexual maturity in western Atlantic bluefin tuna. Sci Rep. 2014 Nov 28;4:7205.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Choudhry M, Landuyt G. The Future of Finance. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.
An edited book
1.
Jupille J, Thornton G, editors. Defects at Oxide Surfaces. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. XVI, 462 p. 202 illus., 95 illus. in color. (Springer Series in Surface Sciences; vol. 58).
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Schultz D, Cook C. Adding Content. In: Cook C, editor. Beginning HTML with CSS and XHTML: Modern Guide and Reference. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2007. p. 51–103.

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
1.
Luntz S. New Subatomic Particle Offers Strong Insights. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014.

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
1.
Government Accountability Office. Federal Student Loans: Education Could Improve Direct Loan Program Customer Service and Oversight. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2016 May. Report No.: GAO-16-523.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
DeReus DL. The correlation between career anchors and satisfaction - a comparative analysis of multiple affiliations under a single organizational structure [Doctoral dissertation]. [Minneapolis, MN]: Capella University; 2012.

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
1.
Kristof ND. Tussling Over Jesus. New York Times. 2011 Jan 27;A31.

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 titleAustralian Family Physician
ISSN (print)0300-8495
Scope

Other styles