How to format your references using the Journal of General Internal Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of General Internal 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	Download the output style file
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

Halliday AN. Mixing, volatile loss and compositional change during impact-driven accretion of the Earth. Nature. 2004;427(6974):505-509.

A journal article with 2 authors

Moore JN, Simmons SF. Geophysics. More power from below. Science. 2013;340(6135):933-934.

A journal article with 3 authors

Redford KH, Jensen DB, Breheny JJ. Ecology. Integrating the captive and the wild. Science. 2012;338(6111):1157-1158.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Sinervo B, Méndez-de-la-Cruz F, Miles DB, et al. Erosion of lizard diversity by climate change and altered thermal niches. Science. 2010;328(5980):894-899.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Luther GW III. Inorganic Chemistry for Geochemistry and Environmental Sciences. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2016.

An edited book

Choudhury SMAA. Diagnosis of Process Nonlinearities and Valve Stiction: Data Driven Approaches. (Shah SL, Thornhill NF, eds.). Springer; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Türkay M, Kawai T, Sonnewald M, Cumberlidge N. A Brief History of Freshwater Crab Research. In: Kawai T, Cumberlidge N, eds. A Global Overview of the Conservation of Freshwater Decapod Crustaceans. Springer International Publishing; 2016:115-126.

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 Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Blog post

Davis J. Is This 12-Year-Old Girl Really Smarter Than Einstein? IFLScience. September 9, 2015. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/did-12-year-old-girl-really-achieve-higher-iq-einstein/

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. State Department: Progress and Challenges in Addressing Management Issues. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2000.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Motala S. Siblings Caring for Elderly Parents with Dementia. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 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

Sophia Kishkovsky; Compiled by. Arts Briefly; Film Museum Closes in Moscow. New York Times. December 5, 2005:E2.

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	Journal of General Internal Medicine
Abbreviation	J. Gen. Intern. Med.
ISSN (print)	0884-8734
ISSN (online)	1525-1497
Scope	Internal Medicine