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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Postgraduate 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	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

Lohmueller KE. Evolution. On the origin of Peter Rabbit. Science. 2014;345:1000–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lee J-W, Helmann JD. The PerR transcription factor senses H2O2 by metal-catalysed histidine oxidation. Nature. 2006;440:363–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sadqi M, Fushman D, Muñoz V. Atom-by-atom analysis of global downhill protein folding. Nature. 2006;442:317–21.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Saini D, Behlow H, Podila R, et al. Mechanical resonances of helically coiled carbon nanowires. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5542.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. List of MAK and BAT Values 2014. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA 2014.

An edited book

Siclari D, editor. The New Anti-Money Laundering Law: First Perspectives on the 4th European Union Directive. Cham: Springer International Publishing 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Jain V. Domain Adaptation for Face Detection. In: Singh R, Vatsa M, Majumdar A, et al., eds. Machine Intelligence and Signal Processing. New Delhi: Springer India 2016:37–54.

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 Postgraduate Medical Journal.

Blog post

Fang J. Robotic Arms and Hands That Can Feel. IFLScience. 2014. (accessed 30 October 2018)

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. New Computer Was Not Needed for the St. Louis Computer Center. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 1976.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Miles CS. Elicitation of a Program’s Behaviors. 2015.

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

Johnson G. The Brain Versus the Mind. New York Times. 2016;D3.

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	Postgraduate Medical Journal
Abbreviation	Postgrad. Med. J.
ISSN (print)	0032-5473
ISSN (online)	1469-0756
Scope	General Medicine