How to format your references using the Evidence-Based Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Evidence-Based 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

Holz RW. Cell biology. Dynamin flexibility drives fission. Science. 2013;339:1392–3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hyde PS, Knudsen EI. The optic tectum controls visually guided adaptive plasticity in the owl’s auditory space map. Nature. 2002;415:73–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

Veizer J, Godderis Y, François LM. Evidence for decoupling of atmospheric CO2 and global climate during the Phanerozoic eon. Nature. 2000;408:698–701.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Paredes B, Widera A, Murg V, et al. Tonks-Girardeau gas of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. Nature. 2004;429:277–81.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cooper N, Forrest K, Cramp P. Essential Guide to Acute Care. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008.

An edited book

Ochiai H, Anjyo K, editors. Mathematical Progress in Expressive Image Synthesis II: Extended and Selected Results from the Symposium MEIS2014. Tokyo: Springer Japan 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Ebara M, Kotsuchibashi Y, Uto K, et al. Smart Surfaces. In: Kotsuchibashi Y, Narain R, Idota N, et al., eds. Smart Biomaterials. Tokyo: Springer Japan 2014:115–88.

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 Evidence-Based Medicine.

Blog post

Andrew E. Doctors Bow After 11-Year-Old Brain Tumor Patient Donates Organs. IFLScience. 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/doctors-bow-after-11-year-old-brain-tumor-patient-donates-organs/ (accessed 30 October 2018)

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. International School Feeding: USDA’s Oversight of the McGovern-Dole Food for Education Program Needs Improvement. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 2011.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Hoffer H. Aesthetics of destruction: Music and the worldview of Ikari Shinji in “Neon Genesis Evangelion”. 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

Johnson G. Turning Nature Against Cancer. New York Times. 2015;D3.

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	Evidence-Based Medicine
Abbreviation	Evid. Based. Med.
ISSN (print)	1356-5524
ISSN (online)	1473-6810
Scope	General Medicine