How to format your references using the Population Health Metrics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Population Health Metrics. 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. Weimerskirch H. Ecology. Seabirds--individuals in colonies. Science. 2013;341:35–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Pitman NCA, Jørgensen PM. Estimating the size of the world’s threatened flora. Science. 2002;298:989.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Wang YA, Feng A-C, Ganz PA. Health services utilisation in breast cancer survivors in Taiwan. Sci Rep. 2014;4:7466.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Kroodsma DA, Mayorga J, Hochberg T, Miller NA, Boerder K, Ferretti F, et al. Tracking the global footprint of fisheries. Science. 2018;359:904–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Blanchet G, Charbit M. Digital Signal and Image Processing Using Matlab®. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2015.

An edited book

1. Leung CS, Lee M, Chan JH, editors. Neural Information Processing: 16th International Conference, ICONIP 2009, Bangkok, Thailand, December 1-5, 2009, Proceedings, Part II. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Soergel W. Categories of Harish-Chandra Modules. In: Joseph A, Melnikov A, Penkov I, editors. Highlights in Lie Algebraic Methods. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser; 2012. p. 103–22.

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 Population Health Metrics.

Blog post

1. O`Callaghan J. This NASA Asteroid Mission Is Going To Bring A Huge Chunk Of Space Rock To Earth [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-prepares-launch-spacecraft-asteroid-next-year-return-huge-sample-earth-2023/

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. Transit Grants: Department of Labor’s Certification Process. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2000 Apr. Report No.: T-RCED-00-157.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Sahib SS. Numerical solutions of Maxwell’s equations in 1D, 2D, and 3D via the finite element method [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 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

1. Burghardt LF. An Animal Sanctuary Is Under Pressure to Move. New York Times. 2006 Aug 20;14CN6.

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	Population Health Metrics
Abbreviation	Popul. Health Metr.
ISSN (online)	1478-7954
Scope	Epidemiology Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health