How to format your references using the Medical Science Educator citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Medical Science Educator. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

1. Chaudhury A. Plant genetics: hothead healer and extragenomic information. Nature. 2005;437:E1; discussion E2.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Skubi KL, Yoon TP. Organic chemistry: Shape control in reactions with light. Nature. 2014;515:45–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Cramer P, Bushnell DA, Kornberg RD. Structural basis of transcription: RNA polymerase II at 2.8 angstrom resolution. Science. 2001;292:1863–76.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. William J, Euler C, Christensen S, Shlomchik MJ. Evolution of autoantibody responses via somatic hypermutation outside of germinal centers. Science. 2002;297:2066–70.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Siebert G, Maniatis I. Tragende Bauteile aus Glas. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2012.

An edited book

1. Brandes U, Erlebach T, editors. Network Analysis: Methodological Foundations. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Roberts J. Socrates, the Athenian. In: Anagnostopoulos G, Miller FD Jr, editors. Reason and Analysis in Ancient Greek Philosophy: Essays in Honor of David Keyt. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2013. p. 55–66.

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 Science Educator.

Blog post

1. Hale T. Fukushima Is Turning Into A Robot Graveyard After Multiple Probe Failures. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017.

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Research and Development--and the Congress. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1968 Jan. Report No.: 091220.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Marroquin Salvador MD. Hypervelocity Impact of Spherical Aluminum 2017-T4 Projectiles on Aluminum 6061-T6 Multi-Layered Sheets [Doctoral dissertation]. [Mississippi State, MS]: Mississippi State University; 2017.

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

1. Schwartz J. A Hurricane That’s Hard to Predict, Even for a Veteran Storm Watcher. New York Times. 2016 Oct 7;A19.

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 Science Educator
Abbreviation	Med. Sci. Educ.
ISSN (online)	2156-8650
Scope