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

Petronis A. Epigenetics as a unifying principle in the aetiology of complex traits and diseases. Nature. 2010 Jun 10;465(7299):721–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

van der Zwaag D, Meijer EW. SELF-ORGANIZATION. Fueling connections between chemistry and biology. Science. 2015 Sep 4;349(6252):1056–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rychert CA, Fischer KM, Rondenay S. A sharp lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary imaged beneath eastern North America. Nature. 2005 Jul 28;436(7050):542–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Reysenbach AL, Banta AB, Boone DR, Cary SC, Luther GW. Microbial essentials at hydrothermal vents. Nature. 2000 Apr 20;404(6780):835.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Haas TC. Improving Natural Resource Management. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2011.

An edited book

Durán F, editor. Rewriting Logic and Its Applications: 9th International Workshop, WRLA 2012, Held as a Satellite Event of ETAPS, Tallinn, Estonia, March 24-25, 2012, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. VIII, 241 p. 51 illus. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; vol. 7571).

A chapter in an edited book

Nunes BG, Costa JP, Godinho P. On the Application of AHP to the Diagnostic of Portuguese SME. In: Hernández JE, Liu S, Delibašić B, Zaraté P, Dargam F, Ribeiro R, editors. Decision Support Systems II - Recent Developments Applied to DSS Network Environments: Euro Working Group Workshop, EWG-DSS 2012, Liverpool, UK, April 12-13, 2012, and Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-11, 2012, Revised Selected and Extended Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. p. 57–71. (van der Aalst W, Mylopoulos J, Rosemann M, Shaw MJ, Szyperski C, editors. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing).

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

Hale T. The Gender Gap Of Alcohol Consumption Has Almost Disappeared. 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. Federal Research: Evaluation of Small Business Innovation Research Can Be Strengthened. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1999 Jun. Report No.: RCED-99-114.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Crowell ML. A Case Study into the Perception of World Language Study of All Stakeholders in a Suburban Midwest School District [Doctoral dissertation]. [ St. Charles, MO]: Lindenwood University; 2016.

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

George RP. The Evangelist. New York Times. 2014 Dec 21;BR14.

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

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