How to format your references using the Public Health citation style

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

Yoho R. How science fairs shaped my career. Science. 2015 Sep 25;349(6255):1578.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pedraza JM, van Oudenaarden A. Noise propagation in gene networks. Science. 2005 Mar 25;307(5717):1965–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dudley AT, Ros MA, Tabin CJ. A re-examination of proximodistal patterning during vertebrate limb development. Nature. 2002 Aug 1;418(6897):539–44.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wang XX, Tan ZH, Zeng M, Wang JN. Carbon nanocages: a new support material for Pt catalyst with remarkably high durability. Sci Rep. 2014 Mar 24;4:4437.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lee JYB. Scalable Continuous Media Streaming Systems. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2005.

An edited book

Baveye PC, Laba M, Mysiak J, editors. Uncertainties in Environmental Modelling and Consequences for Policy Making. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2009. XIX, 401 p. (NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security).

A chapter in an edited book

Cho JR, Park J, Sano Y. Edge-disjoint Decompositions of Complete Multipartite Graphs into Gregarious Long Cycles. In: Akiyama J, Kano M, Sakai T, editors. Computational Geometry and Graphs: Thailand-Japan Joint Conference, TJJCCGG 2012, Bangkok, Thailand, December 6-8, 2012, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. p. 57–63. (Hutchison D, Kanade T, Kittler J, Kleinberg JM, Mattern F, Mitchell JC, et al., editors. Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

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 Public Health.

Blog post

Andrew E. Caiman Tears Quench Thirst of Bee and Butterfly [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/caiman-tears-quench-thirst-bee-and-butterfly/

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. Survey of the Activities of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1976 Aug. Report No.: 091303.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Katavic I. Corporate social responsibility and sustainable competitive advantage: A case study of the cement industry [Doctoral dissertation]. [Scottsdale, AZ]: Northcentral 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

Koblin J, Grynbaum MM. How NBC Was Scooped on Its Own ‘Access Hollywood’ Trump Video. New York Times. 2016 Oct 9;B3.

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	Public Health
Abbreviation	Public Health
ISSN (print)	0033-3506
ISSN (online)	1476-5616
Scope	General Medicine Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health