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

Chapman T. Breathing life into chemistry. Nature. 2004 Aug 19;430(7002):948–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

Breidenbach MA, Brunger AT. Substrate recognition strategy for botulinum neurotoxin serotype A. Nature. 2004 Dec 16;432(7019):925–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Amari T, Luciani JF, Aly JJ. Small-scale dynamo magnetism as the driver for heating the solar atmosphere. Nature. 2015 Jun 11;522(7555):188–91.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Kromer B, Manning SW, Kuniholm PI, Newton MW, Spurk M, Levin I. Regional 14CO2 offsets in the troposphere: magnitude, mechanisms, and consequences. Science. 2001 Dec 21;294(5551):2529–32.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Jäger W, Marzahn G. Mauerwerk. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2010.

An edited book

Loue S, Sajatovic M, editors. Encyclopedia of Immigrant Health. New York, NY: Springer; 2012. 14 illus. eReference.

A chapter in an edited book

Zhang K, Shen X. Health Data Sharing with Misbehavior Detection. In: Shen X (sherman), editor. Security and Privacy for Mobile Healthcare Networks. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 47–80. (Wireless Networks).

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

Andrews R. DNA Study Confirms That This Bizarre Venomous Mammal Diverged From Other Mammals Long Before The Extinction Of The Dinosaurs [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/incredibly-weird-venomous-mammal-survived-extinction-killed-dinosaurs/

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. National Airspace System: Long-Term Capacity Planning Needed Despite Recent Reduction in Flight Delays. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2001 Dec. Report No.: GAO-02-185.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Roberts DM. Resilience in Physically Maltreated Adolescents: Interpersonally Related Protective Factors and Gender Differences [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington University; 2017.

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

Baker AL. Murder Charge for Officer In Bronx Woman’s Death. New York Times. 2017 May 31;A18.

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