How to format your references using the Medicine in Drug Discovery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Medicine in Drug Discovery. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

[1]

Garber K. Science careers. Translational institute unites unlikely partners at Penn. Science 2007;317:968–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Richardson AJ, Poloczanska ES. Ocean science. Under-resourced, under threat. Science 2008;320:1294–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Li Y-L, Kinloch IA, Windle AH. Direct spinning of carbon nanotube fibers from chemical vapor deposition synthesis. Science 2004;304:276–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Vainchtein ID, Chin G, Cho FS, Kelley KW, Miller JG, Chien EC, et al. Astrocyte-derived interleukin-33 promotes microglial synapse engulfment and neural circuit development. Science 2018;359:1269–73.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Mather PM, Koch M. Computer Processing of Remotely-Sensed Images. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2011.

An edited book

[1]

Pezzulo G, Butz MV, Sigaud O, Baldassarre G, editors. Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems: From Psychological Theories to Artificial Cognitive Systems. vol. 5499. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Jøsang A, Ødegaard M, Oftedal E. Cybersecurity Through Secure Software Development. In: Bishop M, Miloslavskaya N, Theocharidou M, editors. Information Security Education Across the Curriculum: 9th IFIP WG 11.8 World Conference, WISE 9, Hamburg, Germany, May 26-28, 2015, Proceedings, Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015, p. 53–63.

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 in Drug Discovery.

Blog post

[1]

Luntz S. Birds That Wake Up Earlier Have More Offspring. IFLScience 2015.

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. Telecommunications: Concerns About Competition in the Cellular Telephone Service Industry. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Whitman S. Operational risk and financial institution leaders’ decision making: A quantitative descriptive correlation study. Doctoral dissertation. University of Phoenix, 2012.

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]

Palmer E, Otis J. 4 Years After Hurricane Sandy, 2 Households Still Wait to Return Home. New York Times 2016:A19.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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 in Drug Discovery
ISSN (print)	2590-0986
Scope