How to format your references using the Maternal and Child Health Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Maternal and Child Health Journal. 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

Greeley, J. P. (2012). Chemistry. Active site of an industrial catalyst. Science (New York, N.Y.), 336(6083), 810–811.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rowe, M. L., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2009). Differences in early gesture explain SES disparities in child vocabulary size at school entry. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323(5916), 951–953.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sezen, U. U., Chazdon, R. L., & Holsinger, K. E. (2005). Genetic consequences of tropical second-growth forest regeneration. Science (New York, N.Y.), 307(5711), 891.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Hansen, K. F., Sakamoto, K., Pelz, C., Impey, S., & Obrietan, K. (2014). Profiling status epilepticus-induced changes in hippocampal RNA expression using high-throughput RNA sequencing. Scientific reports, 4, 6930.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lehto, J., & Hou, X. (2010). Chemistry and Analysis of Radionuclides. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Marron, P. J., Voigt, T., Corke, P., & Mottola, L. (Eds.). (2010). Real-World Wireless Sensor Networks: 4th International Workshop, REALWSN 2010, Colombo, Sri Lanka, December 16-17, 2010. Proceedings (Vol. 6511). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Arous, G. B., Gayrard, V., & Kuptsov, A. (2008). A New REM Conjecture. In V. Sidoravicius & M. E. Vares (Eds.), In and Out of Equilibrium 2 (pp. 59–96). Basel: Birkhäuser.

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 Maternal and Child Health Journal.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2017, January 21). High Blood Pressure May Protect Over-80s From Dementia. IFLScience. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/high-blood-pressure-may-protect-over80s-from-dementia/

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. (1984). A List of Selected GAO Publications Containing Checklists or Guidance on Computer Software Topics (No. 125250). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Metcalfe, A. C. (2017). Using Evolution as a Context for Teaching the Nature of Science to Diverse Student Populations: A High School Unit of Curriculum (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Phillips-Sandy, M. (2013, December 28). Follow Me, Follow My Mom. New York Times, p. A19.

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	Maternal and Child Health Journal
Abbreviation	Matern. Child Health J.
ISSN (print)	1092-7875
ISSN (online)	1573-6628
Scope	Epidemiology Obstetrics and Gynaecology Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health