How to format your references using the Discovery Medicine citation style

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

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
Macilwain C. Pharmaceutical industry must take its medicine. Nature 470(7333):141, 2011.
A journal article with 2 authors
Bowles S, Posel D. Genetic relatedness predicts South African migrant workers’ remittances to their families. Nature 434(7031):380–383, 2005.
A journal article with 3 authors
Little AF, van Oppen MJH, Willis BL. Flexibility in algal endosymbioses shapes growth in reef corals. Science 304(5676):1492–1494, 2004.
A journal article with 21 or more authors
Homes CC, Vogt T, Shapiro SM, Wakimoto S, Ramirez AP. Optical response of high-dielectric-constant perovskite-related oxide. Science 293(5530):673–676, 2001.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Pasternak JJ. An Introduction to Human Molecular Genetics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2005.
An edited book
Zu Q, Vargas-Vera M, Hu B (eds.). Pervasive Computing and the Networked World: Joint International Conference, ICPCA/SWS 2013, Vina del Mar, Chile, December 5-7, 2013. Revised Selected Papers. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2014.
A chapter in an edited book
Mozyrska D, Wyrwas M. Fractional Linear Equations with Discrete Operators of Positive Order. In: Advances in Modelling and Control of Non-integer-Order Systems: 6th Conference on Non-integer Order Calculus and Its Applications, 2014 Opole, Poland. Latawiec KJ , Łukaniszyn M , Stanisławski R (eds.). pp.47–58. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2015.

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 Discovery Medicine.

Blog post
Fang J. Underwater DNA Reveals that Wheat Arrived 2,000 Years Before Agriculture in Britain. IFLScience 2015.

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. Proposed Regulation Prescribing New “Fixed-Price Options” " Provisions for Use in Automatic Data Processing Systems Procurement. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1977.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Torres MF. The effect of mergers and acquisitions in the information technology organizational structures. 2009.

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
Kenigsberg B. Left on Purpose. New York Times:C9, 2017.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Macilwain, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Bowles and Posel, 2005; Macilwain, 2011).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Bowles and Posel, 2005)
  • Three or more authors: (Homes et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal titleDiscovery Medicine
ISSN (print)1539-6509
ISSN (online)1944-7930
Scope

Other styles