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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR). 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

Jokipii JR. Astronomy. Our interstellar neighborhood. Science 2005 Mar 4;307(5714):1424–1425. PMID:15746417

A journal article with 2 authors

Taylor RL, Mittlefehldt DW. Missing martian meteorites. Science 2000 Oct 13;290(5490):273c–5c. PMID:17734109

A journal article with 3 authors

Smolyaninov II, Hung Y-J, Davis CC. Magnifying superlens in the visible frequency range. Science 2007 Mar 23;315(5819):1699–1701. PMID:17379804

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ebralidze A, Wang Y, Petkova V, Ebralidse K, Junghans RP. RNA leaching of transcription factors disrupts transcription in myotonic dystrophy. Science 2004 Jan 16;303(5656):383–387. PMID:14657503

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gerardi MH, Zimmerman MC. Wastewater Pathogens. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2004. ISBN:9780471710431

An edited book

S M, Kumar SS, editors. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Signal and Image Processing 2012 (ICSIP 2012): Volume 1. New Delhi: Springer India; 2013. ISBN:9788132209966

A chapter in an edited book

Bellout H, Bloom F. General Existence and Uniqueness Theorems for Incompressible Bipolar and Non-Newtonian Fluid Flow. In: Bloom F, editor. Incompressible Bipolar and Non-Newtonian Viscous Fluid Flow Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. p. 239–345.

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 Internet Research.

Blog post

Fang J. Why Do Snakes Have DNA For Limb Development? IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/why-do-snakes-have-dna-limb-development/ [accessed Oct 30, 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. Perchlorate: Occurrence Is Widespread but at Varying Levels; Federal Agencies Have Taken Some Actions to Respond to and Lessen Releases. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2010 Aug. Report No.: GAO-10-769.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Shurts C. Superstructure [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2010.

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

Bordewich FM. Debate Prep. New York Times 2017 Aug 14;BR21.

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 Internet Research
Abbreviation	J. Med. Internet Res.
ISSN (print)	1439-4456
ISSN (online)	1438-8871
Scope	Health Informatics