How to format your references using the Medical Education citation style

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

Woolston C. Breast cancer: 4 big questions. Nature. 2015 Nov 19;527(7578):S120.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gerstner W, Naud R. Neuroscience. How good are neuron models? Science. 2009 Oct 16;326(5951):379–80.

A journal article with 3 authors

Keenan SW, Engel AS, Elsey RM. The alligator gut microbiome and implications for archosaur symbioses. Sci Rep. 2013 Oct 7;3:2877.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hansen CJ, Esposito LW, Stewart AIF, Meinke B, Wallis B, Colwell JE, et al. Water vapour jets inside the plume of gas leaving Enceladus. Nature. 2008 Nov 27;456(7221):477–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Anaya-Lara O, Campos-Gaona D, Moreno-Goytia E, Adam G. Offshore Wind Energy Generation. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2014.

An edited book

De Silva AM. Grammar-Based Feature Generation for Time-Series Prediction. Leong PHW, editor. Singapore: Springer; 2015. XI, 99 p. 28 illus. (SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology).

A chapter in an edited book

Kunz M, Fuchs L, Netter M, Pernul G. How to Discover High-Quality Roles? A Survey and Dependency Analysis of Quality Criteria in Role Mining. In: Camp O, Weippl E, Bidan C, Aïmeur E, editors. Information Systems Security and Privacy: First International Conference, ICISSP 2015, Angers, France, February 9-11, 2015, Revised Selected Papers. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 49–67. (Communications in Computer and Information 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 Education.

Blog post

Andrew E. There’s No Evidence Of Bubonic Plague Bacteria On NYC Subway. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015.

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. Tax Systems Modernization: IRS Could Have Avoided Successful Protests of Major Computer Procurement. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1992 Mar. Report No.: IMTEC-92-27.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Jahan M. A policy to protect hoarders: An analysis of Fair Housing Amendments Act, 1988 [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2015.

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

Eldred SM, Eligon J. Doctor Saw Prince a Day Before His Death. New York Times. 2016 May 11;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 Education
Abbreviation	Med. Educ.
ISSN (print)	0308-0110
ISSN (online)	1365-2923
Scope	General Medicine Education