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. Abbott A. Human fatality adds fresh impetus to fight against bird flu. Nature. 2003;423:5.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Lloyd-Jones GC, Ball LT. Catalysis. Self-control tames the coupling of reactive radicals. Science. 2014;345:381–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Moon-van der Staay SY, De Wachter R, Vaulot D. Oceanic 18S rDNA sequences from picoplankton reveal unsuspected eukaryotic diversity. Nature. 2001;409:607–10.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Woudstra EC, Gilbert C, Fellows J, Jansen L, Brouwer J, Erdjument-Bromage H, et al. A Rad26-Def1 complex coordinates repair and RNA pol II proteolysis in response to DNA damage. Nature. 2002;415:929–33.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Wright JR, Cooper JE. Introduction to Aircraft Aeroelasticity and Loads. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd; 2014.

An edited book

1. Bárány I, Böröczky KJ, Tóth GF, Pach J, editors. Geometry — Intuitive, Discrete, and Convex: A Tribute to László Fejes Tóth. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Bouhdadi M, Balouki Y, Chabbar EM. Meta-modelling Syntax and Semantics of Structural Concepts for Open Networked Enterprises. In: Gervasi O, Gavrilova ML, editors. Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2007: International Conference, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, August 26-29, 2007 Proceedings Part III. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007. p. 45–54.

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. Andrew E. Teenage Girl May Have Developed Hepatitis From Green Tea Bought Online [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/teenage-girl-may-have-developed-hepatitis-green-tea-bought-online/

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. Airport Finance: Preliminary Analysis Indicates Proposed Changes in the Airport Improvement Program May Not Resolve Funding Needs for Smaller Airports. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2007 Mar. Report No.: GAO-07-617T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Pederson HM. Decreasing blame and building therapeutic alliance: Clarifying central change processes in functional family therapy [Doctoral dissertation]. [Bloomington, IN]: Indiana University; 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

1. Morone JA. Scarface. New York Times. 2016 Dec 2;BR36.

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