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

Holden, C. (2000). ACADEMIC COMMUNITY: Ruling Allows Unions at Private Colleges. Science (New York, N.Y.), 290(5494), 1069–1071.

A journal article with 2 authors

Friend, S. H., & Schadt, E. E. (2014). Translational genomics. Clues from the resilient. Science (New York, N.Y.), 344(6187), 970–972.

A journal article with 3 authors

Thommes, E. W., Matsumura, S., & Rasio, F. A. (2008). Gas disks to gas giants: simulating the birth of planetary systems. Science (New York, N.Y.), 321(5890), 814–817.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Kagawa, T., Sakai, T., Suetsugu, N., Oikawa, K., Ishiguro, S., Kato, T., … Wada, M. (2001). Arabidopsis NPL1: a phototropin homolog controlling the chloroplast high-light avoidance response. Science (New York, N.Y.), 291(5511), 2138–2141.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Horrocks, G. (2010). Greek. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Nguyen, C. (2016). Stepped-Frequency Radar Sensors: Theory, Analysis and Design. (J. Park, Ed.). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Datzberger, S. (2016). Civil Society as a Postcolonial Project: Challenging Normative Notions in Post-conflict Sub-Saharan Africa. In N. Dhawan, E. Fink, J. Leinius, & R. Mageza-Barthel (Eds.), Negotiating Normativity (pp. 79–93). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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. (2014, January 28). Trouble strikes China’s lunar rover, Yutu. IFLScience. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from

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. (2000). Aviation Competition: Issues Related to the Proposed United Airlines-US Airways Merger (No. GAO-01-212). 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

Lutchman, C. (2008). Leadership impact on turnover among power engineers in the Oil Sands of Alberta (Doctoral dissertation). University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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

Fiske, I. H. (1906, February 3). KEATS’S “LAMIA.”; Found on Shelley’s Drowned Body and Cast Into His Funeral Flames. New York Times, p. REVIEW OF BOOKSBR61.

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