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

Balter M. EUROPEAN SCIENCE POLICY: France Rebels Against Gene-Patenting Law. Science. 2000;288(5474):2115a.

A journal article with 2 authors

Faccenna C, Becker TW. Shaping mobile belts by small-scale convection. Nature. 2010;465(7298):602-605.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cordier P, Amodeo J, Carrez P. Modelling the rheology of MgO under Earth’s mantle pressure, temperature and strain rates. Nature. 2012;481(7380):177-180.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Khademi S, O’Connell J 3rd, Remis J, Robles-Colmenares Y, Miercke LJW, Stroud RM. Mechanism of ammonia transport by Amt/MEP/Rh: structure of AmtB at 1.35 A. Science. 2004;305(5690):1587-1594.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ferrant JL, Gilson M, Jobert S, et al. Synchronous Ethernet and IEEE 1588 in Telecoms. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

Wong CP, Moon KS, Li Y (grace), eds. Nano-Bio- Electronic, Photonic and MEMS Packaging. 1st ed. Springer US; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

Bullinger M, Schmidt S, Naber D. Cross-cultural Quality of Life Research in Mental Health. In: Ritsner MS, Awad AG, eds. Quality of Life Impairment in Schizophrenia, Mood and Anxiety Disorders: New Perspectives on Research and Treatment. Springer Netherlands; 2007:67-98.

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

Andrew E. Troubling Times for Tigers. 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. Independent Media Development Abroad: Challenges Exist in Implementing U.S. Efforts and Measuring Results. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Anderson JS. Boys in Crisis: A Grounded Theory Study of Male High School Dropouts in a Rural Setting. Doctoral dissertation. University of Phoenix; 2008.

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

Saslow L. Grants Will Aid First-Time Home Buyers. New York Times. October 1, 2006:14LI2.

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