How to format your references using the Pharmaceutical Methods citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Pharmaceutical Methods. 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

Narlikar JV. Venture funding for new ideas. Nature. 2000;404(6779):707.

A journal article with 2 authors

Barbour DL, Wang X. Contrast tuning in auditory cortex. Science. 2003;299(5609):1073-1075.

A journal article with 3 authors

Weymouth AJ, Hofmann T, Giessibl FJ. Quantifying molecular stiffness and interaction with lateral force microscopy. Science. 2014;343(6175):1120-1122.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Sheng Y, Liao LD, Thakor N, Tan MC. Rare-Earth doped particles as dual-modality contrast agent for minimally-invasive luminescence and dual-wavelength photoacoustic imaging. Sci Rep. 2014;4:6562.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cauvin C, Escobar F, Serradj A. Thematic Cartography and Transformations. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

Kumar S, Khanal SK, Yadav YK, eds. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Recent Advances in Bioenergy Research. Springer India; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Halper J. Advances in the Use of Growth Factors for Treatment of Disorders of Soft Tissues. In: Halper J, ed. Progress in Heritable Soft Connective Tissue Diseases. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. Springer Netherlands; 2014:59-76.

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 Pharmaceutical Methods.

Blog post

Hale T. Bizarre Creature That Looks “Half-Crocodile-Half-Buffalo” Born In Thai Village. 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. National Highway System: Refinements Would Strengthen the System. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1994.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Huang J. Multispectral Imaging of Skin Oxygenation. Doctoral dissertation. Ohio State University; 2013.

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

Craig S. Despite Risks, Cuomo Bets on Solar Power to Lift Buffalo. New York Times. October 26, 2015:A15.

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	Pharmaceutical Methods
Abbreviation	Pharm. Methods
ISSN (print)	2229-4708
Scope