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

Smith AB. Paleontology. Making the best of a patchy fossil record. Science. 2003 Jul 18;301(5631):321–2.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gao L, Theuns T. Lighting the universe with filaments. Science. 2007 Sep 14;317(5844):1527–30.

A journal article with 3 authors

Depew MJ, Lufkin T, Rubenstein JLR. Specification of jaw subdivisions by Dlx genes. Science. 2002 Oct 11;298(5592):381–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wang X, Kellner AWA, Jiang S, Cheng X, Wang Q, Ma Y, et al. Egg accumulation with 3D embryos provides insight into the life history of a pterosaur. Science. 2017 Dec 1;358(6367):1197–201.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lyatkher VM, Proudovsky AM. Hydraulic Modeling. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2016.

An edited book

Benedetto A, Pajewski L, editors. Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. XIV, 371 p. 102 illus. (Springer Transactions in Civil and Environmental Engineering).

A chapter in an edited book

Di Martino C. For a Genealogy of Selfhood: Starting from Paul Ricœur. In: Davidson S, Vallée MA, editors. Hermeneutics and Phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur: Between Text and Phenomenon. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 61–74. (Contributions to Hermeneutics).

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

Andrews R. What The Heck Was This Smelly Pink Blob Floating In The Indian Ocean? [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/heck-smelly-pink-blob-floating-indian-ocean/

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. Financial Management Systems: HHS Faces Many Challenges in Implementing Its Unified Financial Management System. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2004 Sep. Report No.: GAO-04-1089T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Batistick SA. Reclaiming One’s Gold: Imagining the Inner Child Through the Art of Therapeutic Fairy Tale Writing [Doctoral dissertation]. [Carpinteria, CA]: Pacifica Graduate Institute; 2015.

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

Crow K. Looking For Love. New York Times. 2001 Feb 11;141.

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