How to format your references using the Nigerian Medical Journal citation style

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

Piston DW. Research tools: Understand how it works. Nature. 2012;484(7395):440-441.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cheng C, Kao KC. Microbiology. How to survive being hot and inebriated. Science. 2014;346(6205):35-36.

A journal article with 3 authors

Killgore WDS, Olson EA, Weber M. Physical exercise habits correlate with gray matter volume of the hippocampus in healthy adult humans. Sci Rep. 2013;3:3457.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Kurakawa T, Ueda N, Maekawa M, et al. Direct control of shoot meristem activity by a cytokinin-activating enzyme. Nature. 2007;445(7128):652-655.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Agachi PŞ, Nagy ZK, Cristea MV, Imre-Lucaci Á. Model Based Control. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2006.

An edited book

Jorgenson J. The Heat Kernel and Theta Inversion on SL2(C). (Lang S, ed.). Springer; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Aptekar L, Stoecklin D. Programs: Typical and Exemplary. In: Stoecklin D, ed. Street Children and Homeless Youth: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Springer Netherlands; 2014:163-216.

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 Nigerian Medical Journal.

Blog post

Andrews R. These Biodegradable Microbeads Could Completely Replace Conventional Ones. IFLScience.

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. Multiyear Leasing and Government-Wide Purchasing of Automatic Data Processing Equipment Should Result in Significant Savings. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1971.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Phillips TL. “Outsider Within” Narratives of Diversity Leadership: An Exploratory Case Study of Executive Women of Color. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University; 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

Norton MB. At War With the Shakers. New York Times. September 19, 2010:BR20.

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	Nigerian Medical Journal
Abbreviation	Niger. Med. J.
ISSN (print)	0300-1652
Scope	General Medicine