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]

Agre P. The family naturalist. Nature 2010;467:S11.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Taylor RL, Mittlefehldt DW. Missing martian meteorites. Science 2000;290:273c–5c.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Dai X, Chen A, Bai Z. Integrative investigation on breast cancer in ER, PR and HER2-defined subgroups using mRNA and miRNA expression profiling. Sci Rep 2014;4:6566.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Weber CP, Gedik N, Moore JE, Orenstein J, Stephens J, Awschalom DD. Observation of spin Coulomb drag in a two-dimensional electron gas. Nature 2005;437:1330–3.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Rees PA. An Introduction to Zoo Biology and Management. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

[1]

Maldoom D. Broadband in Europe: How Brussels Can Wire the Information Society. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

King RJ. Graves’ Disease Associated with a Thyroid Nodule. In: Ajjan R, Orme SM, editors. Endocrinology and Diabetes: Case Studies, Questions and Commentaries, London: Springer; 2015, p. 25–30.

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]

Andrew E. Previous Sexual Partner’s Semen Can Influence Another Fly’s Offspring. IFLScience 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/previous-sexual-partner-can-influence-another-flys-offspring/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. Information Technology: IRS Needs to Improve Its Processes for Prioritizing and Reporting Performance of Investments. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2016.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Keohane MF. Virtual team communication: Perceptions and experiences influencing the use of videoconferencing technology. Doctoral dissertation. University of Phoenix, 2010.

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]

Kolomatsky M. July’s Most Popular Listings. New York Times 2017:RE2.

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