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

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

Stone R. EASTERN EUROPE: Help Needed to Rebuild Science in Yugoslavia. Science. 2000;290(5492):690-695.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cheetham SW, Brand AH. Cell biology. Insulin finds its niche. Science. 2013;340(6134):817-818.

A journal article with 3 authors

Robinson CV, Sali A, Baumeister W. The molecular sociology of the cell. Nature. 2007;450(7172):973-982.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Isomura T, Ito H, Ogawa S, Masataka N. Absence of predispositional attentional sensitivity to angry faces in children with autism spectrum disorders. Sci Rep. 2014;4:7525.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Speight JG. Coal-Fired Power Generation Handbook. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

Zalevsky Z, ed. Super-Resolved Imaging: Geometrical and Diffraction Approaches. 1st ed. Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

Ajuwon AJ. Access to Bioethics Education in Nigeria: Past History, Current Situation, and Opportunities for the Future. In: ten Have HAMJ, ed. Bioethics Education in a Global Perspective: Challenges in Global Bioethics. Advancing Global Bioethics. Springer Netherlands; 2015:65-71.

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 National Medical Association.

Blog post

Luntz S. Wedge-Tailed Eagles Keep Attacking A Mining Company’s Drones. IFLScience.

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. Financial Market Preparedness: Improvements Made, but More Action Needed to Prepare for Wide-Scale Disasters. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Yobby J. Application of Genetic Algorithm Optimization of Thermodynamic Fluids Designs. Doctoral dissertation. Southern Illinois University; 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

Kishkovsky S. ‘Spring’ Festival as Rite of Refreshment. New York Times. March 31, 2013:AR10.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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 National Medical Association
Abbreviation	J. Natl. Med. Assoc.
ISSN (print)	0027-9684
Scope	General Medicine

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