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

Ory J. Scientists and societies. Two-body problem. Nature 2004; 429: 788.

A journal article with 2 authors

Peale SJ, Lee MH. A primordial origin of the Laplace relation among the Galilean satellites. Science 2002; 298: 593–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pfennig DW, Harcombe WR, Pfennig KS. Frequency-dependent Batesian mimicry. Nature 2001; 410: 323.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Lin Y-S, Chu C-C, Lin J-J, et al. Optical coherence tomography: a new strategy to image planarian regeneration. Sci Rep 2014; 4: 6316.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Polushkin V. Nuclear Electronics. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2005.

An edited book

Bærentzen JA. Guide to Computational Geometry Processing: Foundations, Algorithms, and Methods. London: Springer, 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Matthews RW, Matthews JR. Foraging and Feeding. In: Matthews JR, ed. Insect Behavior: 2nd Edition. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2010.

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

Andrew E. Why Some People Have Trouble Telling Left From Right (And Why It’s So Important). IFLScience 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/why-some-people-have-trouble-telling-left-right-and-why-it-s-so-important/ (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. Telecommunications Acquisitions: Information on GSA’s Procurements. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Hagarty EP. A predictive risk modeling system for the management of small-scale water and wastewater facilities: Toward long-term sustainability of our national parks. 2008.

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

Sisario B. Streaming Services Struggle to Root Out Music That Incites Hatred. New York Times 17 Aug 2017; B5.

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
ISSN (online)	1878-9390
Scope	General Medicine