How to format your references using the Medical Care citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Medical Care. 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

Gardiner JR. Ecology: Foraging further. Nature. 2015 Oct 29;526(7575):646.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ha SJ, Moon JH. In-situ fabrication of macroporous films for dye-sensitised solar cells: formation of the scattering layer and the gelation of electrolytes. Sci Rep. 2014 Jul 9;4:5375.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bowman D, King G, Tapponnier P. Slip partitioning by elastoplastic propagation of oblique slip at depth. Science. 2003 May 16;300(5622):1121–3.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Dougherty MK, Cao H, Khurana KK, Hunt GJ, Provan G, Kellock S, et al. Saturn’s magnetic field revealed by the Cassini Grand Finale. Science. 2018 Oct 5;362(6410).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Paret D. Flexray and its Applications. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2012.

An edited book

Hänsler E, Schmidt G, editors. Speech and Audio Processing in Adverse Environments. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. (Signals and Communication Technology).

A chapter in an edited book

Zhang M, Yin H. Efficient and Context-Aware Privacy Leakage Confinement. In: Yin H, editor. Android Application Security: A Semantics and Context-Aware Approach. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 63–76. (SpringerBriefs in Computer Science).

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 Medical Care.

Blog post

Carpineti A. There Has Been A Mysterious Disruption Of Stratospheric Winds. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016.

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. Transition Series: Information Technology Issues. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1988 Nov. Report No.: OCG-89-6TR.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Newsom SM. Love and Creativity: A Shared Dynamic [Doctoral dissertation]. [Carpinteria, CA]: Pacifica Graduate Institute; 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

(nyt) SK. World Briefing | Europe: Georgia: Device Explodes In Capital. New York Times. 2004 Oct 21;A10.

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	Medical Care
Abbreviation	Med. Care
ISSN (print)	0025-7079
ISSN (online)	1537-1948
Scope	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health