How to format your references using the Medical Principles and Practice citation style

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

Paulsson J. Summing up the noise in gene networks. Nature. 2004 Jan;427(6973):415–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bostwick KS, Prum RO. Courting bird sings with stridulating wing feathers. Science. 2005 Jul;309(5735):736.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gerke J, Lorenz K, Cohen B. Genetic interactions between transcription factors cause natural variation in yeast. Science. 2009 Jan;323(5913):498–501.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Mortlock DJ, Warren SJ, Venemans BP, Patel M, Hewett PC, McMahon RG, et al. A luminous quasar at a redshift of z = 7.085. Nature. 2011 Jun;474(7353):616–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pederson LD. Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2015.

An edited book

Feng C. China’s Changing Legal System: Lawyers & Judges on Civil & Criminal Law. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Bertelsen A. Irving Gottesman and the Schizophrenia Spectrum. In: Ritsner MS, editor. Handbook of Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders, Volume I: Conceptual Issues and Neurobiological Advances. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2011; pp 115–25.

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 Principles and Practice.

Blog post

Hale T. These DIY Eco-Friendly “Air Conditioners” Are Cooling Down Bangladesh [Internet]. IFLScience. 2016 Jun [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/these-diy-ecofriendly-air-conditioners-are-cooling-down-bangladesh/

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. Green Information Technology: Agencies Have Taken Steps to Implement Requirements, but Additional Guidance on Measuring Performance Needed. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2011.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Waugh DL. From forgotten to remembered: The long process of school desegregation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Prince Edward County, Virginia. 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

Vecsey G. Bell Rings Again at Yankee Stadium. New York Times. 2010 Jun;D5.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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 Principles and Practice
Abbreviation	Med. Princ. Pract.
ISSN (print)	1011-7571
ISSN (online)	1423-0151
Scope	General Medicine