Research and Writing Guides

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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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
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
1.
Mayor S. Coming home. Nature. 2005 Jul 28;436(7050):488–9.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Hannonen M, Sundström L. Sociobiology: Worker nepotism among polygynous ants. Nature. 2003 Feb 27;421(6926):910.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Sherwood SC, Bony S, Dufresne JL. Spread in model climate sensitivity traced to atmospheric convective mixing. Nature. 2014 Jan 2;505(7481):37–42.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
1.
Loll B, Kern J, Saenger W, Zouni A, Biesiadka J. Towards complete cofactor arrangement in the 3.0 A resolution structure of photosystem II. Nature. 2005 Dec 15;438(7070):1040–4.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Afoakwa EO. Chocolate Science and Technology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2016.
An edited book
1.
Gabbay DM, Guenthner F, editors. Handbook of Philosophical Logic. 2nd Edition. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2005. XIII, 372 p. (Handbook of Philosophical Logic; vol. 12).
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Chou CP. Higher Education Development in Taiwan. In: Shin JC, Postiglione GA, Huang F, editors. Mass Higher Education Development in East Asia: Strategy, Quality, and Challenges. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 89–103.

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
1.
Davis J. Adorable Slow Lorises Will Go For The Most Potent Of Drinks. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016.

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
1.
Government Accountability Office. Air Traffic Control: Challenges Facing FAA’s Modernization Program. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1992 Mar. Report No.: T-RCED-92-34.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Fay C. Aposematic Variation and the Evolution of Warning Coloration in Mammals [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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
1.
Hubbard B. 21 Killed in Series of Car Bomb Blasts in Syria’s Capital. New York Times. 2017 Jul 2;A5.

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 titleMedicine
AbbreviationMedicine (Abingdon)
ISSN (print)1357-3039
ScopeGeneral Medicine

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