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

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

Hafner SD. Ecology: Is fertilization efficiency misleading? Nature. 2003 Mar 27;422(6930):397–8; discussion 398.

A journal article with 2 authors

Casadevall A, Pirofski LA. Microbiology: Ditch the term pathogen. Nature. 2014 Dec 11;516(7530):165–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ishii H, Sakurai Y, Maruyama T. Effect of soccer shoe upper on ball behaviour in curve kicks. Sci Rep. 2014 Aug 14;4:6067.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Gumenyuk R, Melkumov MA, Khopin VF, Dianov EM, Okhotnikov OG. Effect of absorption recovery in bismuth-doped silica glass at 1450 nm on soliton grouping in fiber laser. Sci Rep. 2014 Nov 13;4:7044.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Abdul-Rahman Y. The Art of RF (Riba-Free) Islamic Banking and Finance. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2014.

An edited book

Zhao RC, editor. Stem Cells: Basics and Clinical Translation. 1st ed. 2015. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2015. XIII, 510 p. 39 illus., 34 illus. in color. (Translational Medicine Research; vol. 1).

A chapter in an edited book

Roberts J. Socrates, the Athenian. In: Anagnostopoulos G, Miller FD Jr, editors. Reason and Analysis in Ancient Greek Philosophy: Essays in Honor of David Keyt. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2013. p. 55–66.

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 the Medical Library Association.

Blog post

Luntz S. How Black Holes Destroy Star Formation [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/how-black-holes-destroy-star-formation/

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. GSA: Federal Communications Commission Planned Move to the Portals II Building. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1998 Feb. Report No.: GGD-98-65R.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Seidel JG. Adolescent female stress management curriculum [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2015.

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

Dynarski S. Make Everyone Take the SAT or ACT. And Make It Free. New York Times. 2017 Jul 14;BU3.

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 the Medical Library Association
Abbreviation	J. Med. Libr. Assoc.
ISSN (print)	1536-5050
ISSN (online)	1558-9439
Scope	Health Informatics Library and Information Sciences