How to format your references using the Patient Education and Counseling citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Patient Education and Counseling. 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	Download the output style file
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]

A. Lawler, SOLAR SYSTEM EXPLORATION: NASA Blasted for Rising Costs, Cancellations, Science 290 (2000) 1666a.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

B. Ellerbroek, F. Rigaut, Optics adapt to the whole sky, Nature 403 (2000) 25–26.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

A. Aitkaliyeva, D. Chen, L. Shao, Phonon transport assisted by inter-tube carbon displacements in carbon nanotube mats, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 2774.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

H. Hock, M.J. Hamblen, H.M. Rooke, J.W. Schindler, S. Saleque, Y. Fujiwara, S.H. Orkin, Gfi-1 restricts proliferation and preserves functional integrity of haematopoietic stem cells, Nature 431 (2004) 1002–1007.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

R.W. Fitzgerald, B.J. Meacham, Fire Performance Analysis for Buildings, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2017.

An edited book

[1]

A. Tajalli, Extreme Low-Power Mixed Signal IC Design: Subthreshold Source-Coupled Circuits, Springer, New York, NY, 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

E.P. Gunderson, Epidemiologic Trends and Maternal Risk Factors Predicting Postpartum Weight Retention, in: W. Nicholson, K. Baptiste-Roberts (Eds.), Obesity During Pregnancy in Clinical Practice, Springer, London, 2014: pp. 77–97.

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 Patient Education and Counseling.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, How’s Your Walnut, Mate? Why Men Don’t Like To Talk About Their Enlarged Prostate, 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, Gulf War Illnesses: DOD’s Conclusions About U.S. Troops’ Exposure Cannot Be Adequately Supported, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J.G. Fine, Magical Transformation or Illusion of Grandeur: The Development of Downtown West Palm Beach, 1985-2015, Doctoral dissertation, Florida Atlantic University, 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]

J. Wagner, Patchwork Mets Give Their Playoff Hopes a Boost, New York Times (2016) B11.

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	Patient Education and Counseling
Abbreviation	Patient Educ. Couns.
ISSN (print)	0738-3991
Scope	General Medicine