How to format your references using the Postgraduate Medicine citation style

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

Cleary AS. Teamwork: The tumor cell edition. Science. 2015;350(6265):1174-1175.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ellis BE, Miles GP. Plant biology. One for all? Science. 2001;292(5524):2022-2023.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chatterjee A, Mitrović M, Fortunato S. Universality in voting behavior: an empirical analysis. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1049.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Nóbrega MA, Zhu Y, Plajzer-Frick I, Afzal V, Rubin EM. Megabase deletions of gene deserts result in viable mice. Nature. 2004;431(7011):988-993.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bisen PS, Debnath M, Prasad GBKS. Microbes. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2012.

An edited book

Kim JH, Yang W, Jo J, Sincak P, Myung H, eds. Robot Intelligence Technology and Applications 3: Results from the 3rd International Conference on Robot Intelligence Technology and Applications. Vol 345. Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Ščančar J, Heath E, Zuliani T, et al. Elements and Persistent Organic Pollutants in the Sediments of the Sava River. In: Milačič R, Ščančar J, Paunović M, eds. The Sava River. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry. Springer; 2015:95-121.

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 Medicine.

Blog post

Andrew E. This Is What Climate Change Deniers Sound Like To Normal People. 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. Federal-Aid Highways: Cost and Oversight of Major Highway and Bridge Projects--Issues and Options. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2003.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Vundavilli R. Bubble Removal in Microfluidic Devices Using Nanofibrous Membranes. Doctoral dissertation. Southern Illinois University; 2014.

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

Qiu L. Fact Check: Rumors, Claims And Context on G.O.P. Health Bill. New York Times. May 6, 2017:A14.

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	Postgraduate Medicine
Abbreviation	Postgrad. Med.
ISSN (print)	0032-5481
ISSN (online)	1941-9260
Scope	General Medicine