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. Lis JT. Imaging Drosophila gene activation and polymerase pausing in vivo. Nature. 2007;450:198–202.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Castaneda J, Matzuk MM. DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY. Toward a rapid and reversible male pill. Science. 2015;350:385–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Perner J, Mauer MC, Hildenbrand M. Identity: key to children’s understanding of belief. Science. 2011;333:474–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Canals M, Puig P, de Madron XD, Heussner S, Palanques A, Fabres J. Flushing submarine canyons. Nature. 2006;444:354–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Kerzner H, Belack C. Managing Complex Projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

1. Ceri S, Brambilla M, editors. Search Computing: Trends and Developments. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Markner-Jäger B. The Rock Cycle. In: Markner-Jäger B, editor. Technical English for Geosciences. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. p. 19–23.

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. Luntz S. Evidence Of Cannibalism In Ancient Humans [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/our-ancestors-drank-human-skulls/

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. Computers in Government: We Couldn’t Do Without Them. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1980 Jun. Report No.: 112745.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Tetley J. An investigation of self-authorship, hope, and meaning in life among second-year college students [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington 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

1. Fisher L. QUOTATION OF THE DAY. New York Times. 2008 Feb 17;A2.

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

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