How to format your references using the Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine citation style

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

Lay T. Seismology: Why giant earthquakes keep catching us out. Nature. 2012;483(7388):149-150.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kaasik K, Lee CC. Reciprocal regulation of haem biosynthesis and the circadian clock in mammals. Nature. 2004;430(6998):467-471.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lin X, Fauqué B, Behnia K. SOLID-STATE PHYSICS. Scalable T² resistivity in a small single-component Fermi surface. Science. 2015;349(6251):945-948.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Huang Y, Lemieux MJ, Song J, Auer M, Wang DN. Structure and mechanism of the glycerol-3-phosphate transporter from Escherichia coli. Science. 2003;301(5633):616-620.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Korn GA. Advanced Dynamic-System Simulation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

Eastwood M, Miller W, eds. Symmetries and Overdetermined Systems of Partial Differential Equations. Vol 144. Springer; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Debnath L, Shah FA. The Wigner–Ville Distribution and Time–Frequency Signal Analysis. In: Shah FA, ed. Wavelet Transforms and Their Applications. Birkhäuser; 2015:287-336.

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 Traditional and Complementary Medicine.

Blog post

Andrews R. These Biodegradable Microbeads Could Completely Replace Conventional Ones. 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. Public Transportation: Opportunities Exist to Improve the Communication and Transparency of Changes Made to the New Starts Program. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Zarate Ramirez F. Pedagogical and Performance Approach to Selected Bel Canto Songs and Arias of Bellini and Donizetti. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2012.

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

Vecsey G. Suddenly, Jeter’s Not Fine. New York Times. June 15, 2011:B14.

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 Traditional and Complementary Medicine
Abbreviation	J. Tradit. Complement. Med.
ISSN (print)	2225-4110
Scope