How to format your references using the Perspectives on Medical Education citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Perspectives on Medical Education. 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. Dobson A. Ecology. Metalife! Science. 2003;301:1488–90.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Nandagopal N, Elowitz MB. Synthetic biology: integrated gene circuits. Science. 2011;333:1244–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Haerizadeh F, Singh MB, Bhalla PL. Transcriptional repression distinguishes somatic from germ cell lineages in a plant. Science. 2006;313:496–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Song X, Zhu C-H, Doan C, Xie T. Germline stem cells anchored by adherens junctions in the Drosophila ovary niches. Science. 2002;296:1855–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Burton E. Business and Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2016.

An edited book

1. Jornitz MW, editor. Sterile Filtration. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Ramtal D, Dobre A. Basic Physics Concepts. In: Dobre A, editor. The Essential Guide to Physics for Flash Games, Animation, and Simulations. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2011. p. 91–131.

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 Perspectives on Medical Education.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Second Inexplicable Die Off Of 60,000 Antelopes [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/second-inexplicable-die-60000-antelope/

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. Teacher Quality: Approaches, Implementation, and Evaluation of Key Federal Efforts. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2007 May. Report No.: GAO-07-861T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Lastica JR. Why Do They Stay? A Phenomenological Study of Secondary Science Teacher Experiences [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: 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

1. Walsh MW. Pension System Move May Squeeze Taxpayers. New York Times. 2016 Dec 22;B1.

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	Perspectives on Medical Education
Abbreviation	Perspect. Med. Educ.
ISSN (print)	2212-2761
ISSN (online)	2212-277X
Scope

Research and Writing Guides