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

Segalman RA. Materials science. Directing self-assembly toward perfection. Science. 2008;321(5891):919-920.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dixon AR, Sato H. High speed and adaptable error correction for megabit/s rate quantum key distribution. Sci Rep. 2014;4:7275.

A journal article with 3 authors

Poulsen CJ, Tabor C, White JD. CLIMATE CHANGE. Long-term climate forcing by atmospheric oxygen concentrations. Science. 2015;348(6240):1238-1241.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Tang AM, Wang WJ, Mei B, Hu WL, Wu M, Liang GL. DEVD-based hydrogelator minimizes cellular apoptosis induction. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1848.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Elias HG. Macromolecules. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2009.

An edited book

Leung CS, Lee M, Chan JH, eds. Neural Information Processing: 16th International Conference, ICONIP 2009, Bangkok, Thailand, December 1-5, 2009, Proceedings, Part II. Vol 5864. Springer; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Medrano G, Beckmann L, Zimmermann N, Grundmann T, Gries T, Leonhardt S. Bioimpedance Spectroscopy with textile Electrodes for a continuous Monitoring Application. In: Leonhardt S, Falck T, Mähönen P, eds. 4th International Workshop on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN 2007): March 26 – 28, 2007 RWTH Aachen University, Germany. IFMBE Proceedings. Springer; 2007:23-28.

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. Can Gene Editing Provide a Solution to Global Hunger? IFLScience. Published July 6, 2015. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/can-gene-editing-provide-solution-global-hunger/

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. European Transportation. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1993.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Moua P. Differential Functions of the Kinesin-1 Tail in Drosophila Melanogaster Transport Processes. Doctoral dissertation. Indiana University; 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

Hollander S. Golden Arms Tourney Continues a Quest. New York Times. June 30, 2002:86.

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

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