How to format your references using the Chinese Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Chinese Medicine. 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

1. Smaglik P. Home and away. Nature. 2004;432:127.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Ionescu AM, Riel H. Tunnel field-effect transistors as energy-efficient electronic switches. Nature. 2011;479:329–37.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Bortnik J, Thorne RM, Meredith NP. The unexpected origin of plasmaspheric hiss from discrete chorus emissions. Nature. 2008;452:62–6.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Staskawicz BJ, Mudgett MB, Dangl JL, Galan JE. Common and contrasting themes of plant and animal diseases. Science. 2001;292:2285–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Storey IC, Allan A. A Guide to Ancient Greek Drama. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd; 2008.

An edited book

1. Darling LF, Erickson G, Clarke A, editors. Collective Improvisation in a Teacher Education Community. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Peterson DM, Hummel CA, Pauls TA, Armstrong JT, Benson JA, Gilbreath CG, et al. Imaging the Effects of Rotation in Altair and Vega. In: Richichi A, Delplancke F, Paresce F, Chelli A, editors. The Power of Optical/IR Interferometry: Recent Scientific Results and 2nd Generation Instrumentation: Proceedings of the ESO Workshop held in Garching, Germany, 4-8 April 2005. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. p. 43–54.

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 Chinese Medicine.

Blog post

1. Carpineti C. Check Out What Comes Crawling Out Of This Elephant [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/check-out-what-comes-crawling-out-of-this-elephant/

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. China: U.S. and European Union Arms Sales Since the 1989 Embargoes. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1998 Apr. Report No.: T-NSIAD-98-171.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Wolff A. PRIDE: A psycho-educational peer support group for LGBTIQ youth: A grant proposal [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 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

1. Sisario B. Springsteen’s Archives: (Where Else?) In Jersey. New York Times. 2017 Jan 11;C3.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Chinese Medicine
Abbreviation	Chin. Med.
ISSN (online)	1749-8546
Scope	Complementary and alternative medicine Pharmacology