How to format your references using the Prehospital Emergency Care citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Prehospital Emergency Care (PEC). 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

Marty T: Research efficiency: Clean up the waste. Nature. 2012;April 4;484(7392):27–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sharma P, Allison JP: The future of immune checkpoint therapy. Science. 2015;April 3;348(6230):56–61.

A journal article with 3 authors

Harvey JA, Corley LS, Strand MR: Competition induces adaptive shifts in caste ratios of a polyembryonic wasp. Nature. 2000;July 13;406(6792):183–6.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Guo R, Mao J, Xie X-M, et al.: Predictive supracolloidal helices from patchy particles. Sci Rep. 2014;November 12;4:7021.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Langley-Evans S: Nutrition, health and disease. Chichester, UK, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2015.

An edited book

Gemzöe L, Keinänen M-L, Maddrell A: Contemporary Encounters in Gender and Religion: European Perspectives. Cham, Springer International Publishing, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Pedersen L, Frier C: Predicting Footbridge Response Using Stochastic Load Models., Topics in Dynamics of Bridges, Volume 3: Proceedings of the 31st IMAC, A Conference on Structural Dynamics, 2013. Edited by Cunha A. New York, NY, Springer, 2013, pp 47–53.

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 Prehospital Emergency Care.

Blog post

O`Callaghan J: This Technique Could Detect Radiation Up To 1 Kilometer Away.IFLScience. Available at https://www.iflscience.com/physics/this-technique-could-detect-radiation-up-to-1-kilometer-away-/. Accessed October 30, 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: NAVSTAR Global Positioning System--A Program With Many Uncertainties. Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Tapal SS: Is the fourth generation of Six Sigma an effective professional development model in K-12 education?

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

Feeney K: Comfort and Spice. New York Times.

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	Prehospital Emergency Care
Abbreviation	Prehosp. Emerg. Care
ISSN (print)	1090-3127
ISSN (online)	1545-0066
Scope	Emergency Medicine Emergency