How to format your references using the Journal of Postgraduate Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Postgraduate 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	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

Laming JM. Astrophysics: Lopsided stellar death. Nature 2014;506(7488):298–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

Levin LA, Le Bris N. The deep ocean under climate change. Science 2015;350(6262):766–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wang JT, Chen C, Kawazoe Y. New carbon allotropes with helical chains of complementary chirality connected by ethene-type π-conjugation. Sci Rep 2013;3:3077.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Fang Y, Wang CF, Zhang ZH, Shao H, Chen S. Robust self-healing hydrogels assisted by cross-linked nanofiber networks. Sci Rep 2013;3:2811.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

German Geotechnical Society. Recommendations for Design and Analysis of Earth Structures using Geosynthetic Reinforcements - EBGEO. Berlin, Germany: Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG; 2012.

An edited book

Morser J, Nishikawa SI, Schöler HR, editors. Stem Cells in Reproduction and in the Brain. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

Lacoin H. The Scaling Limit for Zero-Temperature Planar Ising Droplets: With and Without Magnetic Fields. In: Ramírez AF, Ben Arous G, Ferrari PA, Newman CM, Sidoravicius V, Vares ME, editors. Topics in Percolative and Disordered Systems. New York, NY: Springer; 2014. page 85–120.

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 Postgraduate Medicine.

Blog post

Andrew D. Elephant Herd Watches As Keepers Rescue Drowning Calf [Internet]. IFLScience2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30];Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/herd-wild-elephants-allowed-rescuers-rescue-drowning-calf/

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. Social Research and Development of Limited Use to National Policymakers. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1977.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Norton S. The effects of leadership-efficacy and personality on reactions to stress. 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

Barry E. Attacks Revive Russian Concern That Guerrilla Warfare Will Spread. New York Times2010;A8.

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 Postgraduate Medicine
Abbreviation	J. Postgrad. Med.
ISSN (print)	0022-3859
ISSN (online)	0972-2823
Scope	General Medicine