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

Witten E. When symmetry breaks down. Nature. 2004 Jun;429(6991):507–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Federman SR, Young ED. Comment on “Experimental test of self-shielding in vacuum ultraviolet photodissociation of CO.” Science. 2009 Jun;324(5934):1516; author reply 1516.

A journal article with 3 authors

Beerling DJ, Osborne CP, Chaloner WG. Evolution of leaf-form in land plants linked to atmospheric CO2 decline in the Late Palaeozoic era. Nature. 2001 Mar;410(6826):352–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Youn DH, Jang J-W, Kim JY, Jang JS, Choi SH, Lee JS. Fabrication of graphene-based electrode in less than a minute through hybrid microwave annealing. Sci Rep. 2014 Jun;4:5492.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Purkis S, Klemas V. Remote Sensing and Global Environmental Change. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd; 2011.

An edited book

Sultana RG, editor. Educators of the Mediterranean… …Up Close and Personal: Critical Voices from South Europe and the MENA region. Rotterdam: SensePublishers; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

Leckie FA, Bello DJD. Axial Members and Pressure Vessels. In: Leckie FA, editor. Strength and Stiffness of Engineering Systems. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2009; pp 1–50.

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

Luntz S. Alien-Looking Insect Has Its Own Order [Internet]. IFLScience. 2017 Jan [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/alien-looking-insect-has-its-own-order/

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. K-12 Education: Education’s Experiences with Flexibility Waivers Could Inform Efforts to Assist States with New Requirements. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2016.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kim SA. Development of an age-appropriate, facility-specific nutrition screening and assessment tool for the elderly. 2009

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

Wagner J. Big Setback For Wright; Season Ends For Cespedes. New York Times. 2017 Aug;B9.

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

Research and Writing Guides