How to format your references using the Medicinal Chemistry Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Medicinal Chemistry Research. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Kitano H (2002) Systems biology: a brief overview. Science 295:1662–1664
A journal article with 2 authors
Häkkinen S, Rhines PB (2004) Decline of subpolar North Atlantic circulation during the 1990s. Science 304:555–559
A journal article with 3 authors
Magnuson JJ, Safina C, Sissenwine MP (2001) Ecology and conservation. Whose fish are they anyway? Science 293:1267–1268
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Lupardus PJ, Shen A, Bogyo M, Garcia KC (2008) Small molecule-induced allosteric activation of the Vibrio cholerae RTX cysteine protease domain. Science 322:265–268

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Sailor W (2009) Making RTI Work. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, USA
An edited book
Demokritov SO, Slavin AN (eds) (2013) Magnonics: From Fundamentals to Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
A chapter in an edited book
Hardin PJ, Jackson MW, Shumway JM (2007) Intraurban Population Estimation Using Remotely Sensed Imagery. In: Jensen RR, Gatrell JD, McLean D (eds) Geo-Spatial Technologies in Urban Environments: Policy, Practice, and Pixels. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 47–92

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 Medicinal Chemistry Research.

Blog post
Andrew E (2014) Researchers Use Genetic Switch To Reverse Leukemia In Mice. In: IFLScience. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1972) Identification of NASA Research and Development Programs Subject to Benefit-Cost Analysis. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Horvath CP (2012) Comparison of waste heat driven and electrically driven cooling systems for a high ambient temperature, off-grid application. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park

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
Ratliff B (2016) Imagine Beckett as a Cranky Songwriter. New York Times AR12

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Kitano 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Kitano 2002; Häkkinen and Rhines 2004).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Häkkinen and Rhines 2004)
  • Three or more authors: (Lupardus et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal titleMedicinal Chemistry Research
AbbreviationMed. Chem. Res.
ISSN (print)1054-2523
ISSN (online)1554-8120
ScopeOrganic Chemistry
General Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics

Other styles