How to format your references using the National Medical Journal of China citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for National Medical Journal of China. 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

Ahlquist P. RNA-dependent RNA polymerases, viruses, and RNA silencing. Science. 2002 May 17;296(5571):1270–3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Parkes DC, Wellman MP. Economic reasoning and artificial intelligence. Science. 2015 Jul 17;349(6245):267–72.

A journal article with 3 authors

Whitmore D, Foulkes NS, Sassone-Corsi P. Light acts directly on organs and cells in culture to set the vertebrate circadian clock. Nature. 2000 Mar 2;404(6773):87–91.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Li H, Feng X, Guo Y, Chen D, Li R, Ren X, et al. A malonitrile-functionalized metal-organic framework for hydrogen sulfide detection and selective amino acid molecular recognition. Sci Rep. 2014 Mar 13;4:4366.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Attokaran M. Natural Food Flavors and Colorants. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2011.

An edited book

Dragolov G. Social Cohesion in the Western World: What Holds Societies Together: Insights from the Social Cohesion Radar. Ignácz ZS, Lorenz J, Delhey J, Boehnke K, Unzicker K, editors. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. XXXII, 138 p. 17 illus., 14 illus. in color. (SpringerBriefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research).

A chapter in an edited book

Najeeb U, Mirza MY, Jilani G, Mubashir AK, Zhou WJ. Sesame. In: Gupta SK, editor. Technological Innovations in Major World Oil Crops, Volume 1: Breeding. New York, NY: Springer; 2012. p. 131–45.

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 National Medical Journal of China.

Blog post

Hamilton K. Can Money Buy You Happiness? It’s Complicated [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/can-money-buy-you-happiness-its-complicated/

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. Space Acquisitions: Improvements Needed in Space Systems Acquisitions and Keys to Achieving Them. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2006 Apr. Report No.: GAO-06-626T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Leak SC. Building community capacity to meet the needs of our aging society: Interdisciplinary competency development for professionals [Doctoral dissertation]. [Chapel Hill, NC]: University of North Carolina; 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

Hubbard B, Sengupta S. Russia Backs U.N. Vote to Send Monitors to Aleppo, as Evacuations Resume. New York Times. 2016 Dec 19;A8.

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	National Medical Journal of China
ISSN (print)	0376-2491
Scope