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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Medical Ethics. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Metcalfe DB. Climate science: A sink down under. Nature. 2014;509:566–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Li X, Xu J. Meta-analysis of the association between dietary lycopene intake and ovarian cancer risk in postmenopausal women. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4885.

A journal article with 3 authors

Esteban J, Mayoral L, Ray D. Ethnicity and conflict: theory and facts. Science. 2012;336:858–65.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Pickart RS, Spall MA, Ribergaard MH, et al. Deep convection in the Irminger Sea forced by the Greenland tip jet. Nature. 2003;424:152–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kramer A, Legeard B. Model-Based Testing Essentials. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc 2016.

An edited book

Popkin JD, editor. The Legacies of Richard Popkin. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Osaba E, Carballedo R, Diaz F, et al. A Proposal of Good Practice in the Formulation and Comparison of Meta-heuristics for Solving Routing Problems. In: Puerta JG de la, Ferreira IG, Bringas PG, et al., eds. International Joint Conference SOCO’14-CISIS’14-ICEUTE’14: Bilbao, Spain, June 25th-27th, 2014, Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing 2014:31–40.

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 Ethics.

Blog post

Andrew E. Why The Drugs Market Isn’t Working And What We Can Do To Fix It. IFLScience. 2015. (accessed 30 October 2018)

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. National Airspace System: Airport-Centric Development. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 2013.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Edson C. A Mixed-Methods Investigation on Contributing Factors to the Political Efficacy of Eighth Grade Students in a Suburban School District in Missouri. 2017.

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

Walsh MW. Puerto Rico Development Bank Goes to Court for $400 Million in Taxes. New York Times. 2015;B5.

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 Ethics
Abbreviation	J. Med. Ethics
ISSN (print)	0306-6800
ISSN (online)	1473-4257
Scope	Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) Health Policy Issues, ethics and legal aspects Health(social science)