How to format your references using the Health Professions Education citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Health Professions Education. 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

Smil V. Magic beans. Nature. 2000;407(6804):567.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dekel E, Alon U. Optimality and evolutionary tuning of the expression level of a protein. Nature. 2005;436(7050):588-592.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jakosky BM, Haberle RM, Arvidson RE. Planetary science. The changing picture of volatiles and climate on Mars. Science. 2005;310(5753):1439-1440.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Meylan E, Curran J, Hofmann K, et al. Cardif is an adaptor protein in the RIG-I antiviral pathway and is targeted by hepatitis C virus. Nature. 2005;437(7062):1167-1172.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gee S. Fraud and Fraud Detection. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2014.

An edited book

Schlichter T, Montes L, eds. Forests in Development: A Vital Balance. Springer Netherlands; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Chen CW, Chan LW, Tsai YP, Hung YP. Augmented Stereo Panoramas. In: Narayanan PJ, Nayar SK, Shum HY, eds. Computer Vision – ACCV 2006: 7th Asian Conference on Computer Vision, Hyderabad, India, January 13-16, 2006. Proceedings, Part I. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer; 2006:41-49.

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 Health Professions Education.

Blog post

Andrew D. Superbugs 1, The World 0. IFLScience.

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. Qualifying for Federal Funding of Tribally Controlled Community Colleges. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1981.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sheldon A. The Impact of Power Restoration and Narcissism on Aggression. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2010.

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

Paulson M. ‘Lesser God’ Is Headed For a Broadway Revival. New York Times. August 15, 2017:C3.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Health Professions Education
Abbreviation	Health Prof. Educ.
ISSN (print)	2452-3011
Scope	General Medicine General Nursing Education