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

Connor CE: Neuroscience. Reconstructing a 3D world. Science. 2002;October 11;298(5592):376–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Li L, Ye K: Crystal structure of an H/ACA box ribonucleoprotein particle. Nature. 2006;September 21;443(7109):302–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

Joseph AC, Joseph SE, Chen G: Cross-border portfolio investment networks and indicators for financial crises. Sci Rep. 2014;February 10;4:3991.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Miller MJ, Wei SH, Parker I, et al.: Two-photon imaging of lymphocyte motility and antigen response in intact lymph node. Science. 2002;June 7;296(5574):1869–73.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dinçer İ, Zamfirescu C: Drying Phenomena. Chichester, UK, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2015.

An edited book

Di Rocco C, Turgut M, Jallo G, et al.: Complications of CSF Shunting in Hydrocephalus: Prevention, Identification, and Management. Cham, Springer International Publishing, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Okuno E, Fratin L: Rotations., Biomechanics of the Human Body. Edited by Fratin L. New York, NY, Springer, 2014, pp 59–75.

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

Fang J: Rock Gobies Only Need a Minute to Change Color.IFLScience. Available at https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/rock-gobies-need-only-minute-change-color/. 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: Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration: Powered Industrial Truck Operator Training. Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Moro JM: School Improvement Grants at Work: A Study of Urban, Public New England Schools.

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

Walsh MW: Treasury Official Urges Congress to Act Quickly on Puerto Rico. 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