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

Deming, D. (2015). Astronomy: A small star with an Earth-like planet. Nature, 527(7577), 169–170.

A journal article with 2 authors

Casillas, C. E., & Kammen, D. M. (2010). Environment and development. The energy-poverty-climate nexus. Science (New York, N.Y.), 330(6008), 1181–1182.

A journal article with 3 authors

Santos, M. D., Dorogovtsev, S. N., & Mendes, J. F. F. (2014). Biased imitation in coupled evolutionary games in interdependent networks. Scientific reports, 4, 4436.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Khare, G., Reddy, P. V., Sidhwani, P., & Tyagi, A. K. (2013). KefB inhibits phagosomal acidification but its role is unrelated to M. tuberculosis survival in host. Scientific reports, 3, 3527.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wilson, D. A. (2008). Forensic Procedures for Boundary and Title Investigation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Gilchrest, B. A., & Krutmann, J. (Eds.). (2006). Skin Aging. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Reiter, E., & Williams, S. (2010). Generating Texts in Different Styles. In S. Argamon, K. Burns, & S. Dubnov (Eds.), The Structure of Style: Algorithmic Approaches to Understanding Manner and Meaning (pp. 59–75). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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

Luntz, S. (2015, September 4). What We Learned At Behavior 2015. IFLScience. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/conference-hears-urbanized-lizards-and-damsel-fish-defenses/

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. (1982). The Need for a Better Trained EDP Auditor (No. 117740). 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

Mai, J. (2017). College Application Behaviors: Factors Impacting the College Choices of High School Seniors (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

Hartocollis, A. (2014, February 24). Faculty Questions NYU Langone’s Political Fund-Raising Efforts. New York Times, p. A15.

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