How to format your references using the Medical Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Medical Sciences. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Lindley, D. Questions of Direction. Nature 2001, 410, 305.

A journal article with 2 authors

Matsukawa, Y.; Zinkle, S.J. One-Dimensional Fast Migration of Vacancy Clusters in Metals. Science 2007, 318, 959–962.

A journal article with 3 authors

Huey, D.J.; Hu, J.C.; Athanasiou, K.A. Unlike Bone, Cartilage Regeneration Remains Elusive. Science 2012, 338, 917–921.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Cocheo, V.; Sacco, P.; Boaretto, C.; De Saeger, E.; Ballesta, P.P.; Skov, H.; Goelen, E.; Gonzalez, N.; Caracena, A.B. Urban Benzene and Population Exposure. Nature 2000, 404, 141–142.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Blumberg, L.M. Temperature-Programmed Gas Chromatography; Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA: Weinheim, Germany, 2010; ISBN 9783527632145.

An edited book

Stroke Recovery with Cellular Therapies; Savitz, S.I., Rosenbaum, D.M., Eds.; Current Clinical Neurology; Humana Press: Totowa, NJ, 2008; ISBN 9781588297327.

A chapter in an edited book

HoWangYin, K.-Y.; Carosella, E.D.; LeMaoult, J. Trogocytosis and NK Cells in Mouse and Man. In Natural Killer Cells: At the Forefront of Modern Immunology; Zimmer, J., Ed.; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010; pp. 109–123 ISBN 9783642023088.

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 Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew, E. New Device Could Revive Dead Hearts Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/heart-box-revives-dead-hearts/ (accessed on 30 October 2018).

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 Voice of America; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1992;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Crider, M.C. The Social and Environmental Effects of Shrimp Mariculture: Case Studies of Two Coastal Villages in Ecuador. Doctoral dissertation, Florida Atlantic University: Boca Raton, FL, 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

Oestreich, J.R. The Harpsichordist With a Chip on His Keyboard. New York Times 2017, C2.

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 Sciences
Abbreviation	Med. Sci. (Basel)
ISSN (online)	2076-3271
Scope