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

Lucht RP. Chemistry. Femtosecond lasers for molecular measurements. Science. 2007 Apr 13;316(5822):207–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nicholson DW, Thornberry NA. Apoptosis. Life and death decisions. Science. 2003 Jan 10;299(5604):214–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

Neale MJ, Pan J, Keeney S. Endonucleolytic processing of covalent protein-linked DNA double-strand breaks. Nature. 2005 Aug 18;436(7053):1053–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Kleine T, Münker C, Mezger K, Palme H. Rapid accretion and early core formation on asteroids and the terrestrial planets from Hf-W chronometry. Nature. 2002 Aug 29;418(6901):952–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Schneider HJ. Wittgenstein’s Later Theory of Meaning. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

Gupta P. Healing Traditions of the Northwestern Himalayas. Sharma VK, Sharma S, editors. New Delhi: Springer India; 2014. XXII, 149 p. 6 illus. in color. (SpringerBriefs in Environmental Science).

A chapter in an edited book

Shi M, Zhang Z, Zhou D. Studies on Carrying Capacity of Water Resources in Beijing and Tianjin: Based on the Water Footprint. In: Wen K, Zhu E, editors. Report on Development of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province (2013): Measurement of Carrying Capacity and Countermeasures. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015. p. 99–118. (Current Chinese Economic Report Series).

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

Taub B. Scientist Who Throws Cane Toad Sausages Out Of Helicopters Wins Top Award. 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. Department of Energy’s Consolidation of Information Processing Activities Needs More Attention. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1978 May. Report No.: EMD-78-60.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Knehans A. As you like it: The road to design [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2013.

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

Whiteside K, Das A, Lyall S. The Winner, in a Comeback. New York Times. 2017 Feb 14;B8.

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