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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Canadian 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

Montmerle T. Astronomy. A stellar merry-go-round. Science. 2001 Sep 28;293(5539):2409–10.

A journal article with 2 authors

Belkaid Y, Segre JA. Dialogue between skin microbiota and immunity. Science. 2014 Nov 21;346(6212):954–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Aitkaliyeva A, Chen D, Shao L. Phonon transport assisted by inter-tube carbon displacements in carbon nanotube mats. Sci Rep. 2013 Sep 27;3:2774.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Parhira S, Zhu GY, Jiang RW, Liu L, Bai LP, Jiang ZH. 2’-Epi-uscharin from the latex of Calotropis gigantea with HIF-1 inhibitory activity. Sci Rep. 2014 Apr 23;4:4748.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cheremisinoff NP. Industrial Gas Flaring Practices. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

Alpay D, Cipriani F, Colombo F, Guido D, Sabadini I, Sauvageot JL, editors. Noncommutative Analysis, Operator Theory and Applications. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. VII, 283 p. 20 illus., 2 illus. in color. (Operator Theory: Advances and Applications; vol. 252).

A chapter in an edited book

Hanson RK, Spearrin RM, Goldenstein CS. Effects of Nuclear Spin: Rotational Partition Function and Degeneracies. In: Spearrin RM, Goldenstein CS, editors. Spectroscopy and Optical Diagnostics for Gases. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 79–90.

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 Canadian Family Physician.

Blog post

Luntz S. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. People With Chronic Fatigue Have A Defective Channel In Immune System Cells. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/people-with-chronic-fatigue-have-a-defective-channel-in-immune-system-cells/

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. Summary of Improvement Actions Taken by the Government Printing Office in the Utilization and Management of Automatic Data Processing Resources. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1976 May. Report No.: FGMSD-76-58.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ramey JD. A Case Study: Achievement Studies of Persistent, Transitional, and Transient Populations within the Blitz Program Model at a Large Midwestern Elementary School [Doctoral dissertation]. [ St. Charles, MO]: Lindenwood University; 2013.

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

Rothenberg B. Kvitova Keeps Expectations Low, Even if Oddsmakers Disagree. New York Times. 2017 Jul 1;SP7.

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	Canadian Family Physician
ISSN (print)	0008-350X
ISSN (online)	1715-5258
Scope