How to format your references using the Journal of Medical Case Reports citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Medical Case Reports. 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

1. Rees M. A Longitude Prize for the twenty-first century. Nature. 2014;509:401.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Sawa A, Snyder SH. Genetics. Two genes link two distinct psychoses. Science. 2005;310:1128–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Mungall JE, Ames DE, Hanley JJ. Geochemical evidence from the Sudbury structure for crustal redistribution by large bolide impacts. Nature. 2004;429:546–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Takahashi R-U, Takeshita F, Honma K, Ono M, Kato K, Ochiya T. Ribophorin II regulates breast tumor initiation and metastasis through the functional suppression of GSK3β. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2474.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Schwedt G. Zuckersüße Chemie. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2010.

An edited book

1. Blass JP, editor. Neurochemical Mechanisms in Disease. 1st ed. New York, NY: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Eckardt R. even in Horn Space. In: Bosch P, Gabelaia D, Lang J, editors. Logic, Language, and Computation: 7th International Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language, and Computation, TbiLLC 2007, Tbilisi, Georgia, October 1-5, 2007 Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009. p. 47–61.

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 Medical Case Reports.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Plate Tectonics May Have Driven The Evolution Of Life On Earth [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/plate-tectonics-may-have-driven-evolution-life-earth/

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Lessons Learned for Protecting and Educating Children after the Gulf Coast Hurricanes. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2006 May. Report No.: GAO-06-680R.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Kalinec-Craig C. A case study of four Latina/o pre-service teachers in learning to teach mathematics for understanding and integrate a child’s out-of-school mathematical knowledge and experiences [Doctoral dissertation]. [Tucson, AZ]: University of Arizona; 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

1. Poniewozik J. Feeding Off Trump-Era Anxiety. New York Times. 2017 Sep 4;C1.

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	Journal of Medical Case Reports
Abbreviation	J. Med. Case Rep.
ISSN (online)	1752-1947
Scope	General Medicine