How to format your references using the Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Medicine. 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

White BT. IBI series winner. Aipotu: simulation from nucleotides to populations and back again. Science. 2012 Jul 27;337(6093):424–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Post E, Forchhammer MC. Synchronization of animal population dynamics by large-scale climate. Nature. 2002 Nov 14;420(6912):168–71.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rust MJ, Golden SS, O’Shea EK. Light-driven changes in energy metabolism directly entrain the cyanobacterial circadian oscillator. Science. 2011 Jan 14;331(6014):220–3.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Chang H, Saito M, Nagai T, Liang Y, Kawazoe Y, Wang Z, et al. Single adatom dynamics at monatomic steps of free-standing few-layer reduced graphene. Sci Rep. 2014 Aug 12;4:6037.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Smirnov BM. Fundamentals of Ionized Gases. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2011.

An edited book

Bennett G. Objective-C for Absolute Beginners: iPhone, iPad, and Mac Programming Made Easy. Second Editon. Fisher M, Lees B, editors. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2011. XIX, 340 p.

A chapter in an edited book

Benton PA. A Developable Surface of Uniformly Negative Internal Angle Deficit. In: Martin R, Sabin M, Winkler J, editors. Mathematics of Surfaces XII: 12th IMA International Conference, Sheffield, UK, September 4-6, 2007 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007. p. 64–77. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

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 Medicine.

Blog post

Hamilton K. 5 Dinosaur Myths You Probably Thought Were True [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/video-5-dinosaur-myths-you-probably-thought-were-true/

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. What Every Auditor Should Know About Computer Information Systems. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1986 Jun. Report No.: 130454.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lange AW. Calcineurin/NFATc1/DSCR1 Pathway Function in Cardiac Valvuloseptal Development and Down Syndrome-Related Phenotypes [Doctoral dissertation]. [Cincinnati, OH]: University of Cincinnati; 2006.

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

Vecsey G. Old Pro Matsui Comes Through At the New Park. New York Times. 2009 Nov 5;B12.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Medicine
Abbreviation	Medicine (Abingdon)
ISSN (print)	1357-3039
Scope	General Medicine