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

Clay J. Freeze the footprint of food. Nature. 2011 Jul 20;475(7356):287–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

James JR, Vale RD. Biophysical mechanism of T-cell receptor triggering in a reconstituted system. Nature. 2012 Jul 5;487(7405):64–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hung RJ, Pak CW, Terman JR. Direct redox regulation of F-actin assembly and disassembly by Mical. Science. 2011 Dec 23;334(6063):1710–3.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Xie DY, Sharma SB, Paiva NL, Ferreira D, Dixon RA. Role of anthocyanidin reductase, encoded by BANYULS in plant flavonoid biosynthesis. Science. 2003 Jan 17;299(5605):396–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Smith V. Toni Morrison. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2012.

An edited book

Kanosue K, Oshima S, Cao ZB, Oka K, editors. Physical Activity, Exercise, Sedentary Behavior and Health. Tokyo: Springer Japan; 2015. XI, 336 p. 86 illus., 35 illus. in color.

A chapter in an edited book

Wang Y, Zhang J, Wang Q, Lv F, Chen K. Compressive Spectrum Sensing Based on Sparse Sub-band Basis in Wireless Sensor Network. In: Sun L, Ma H, Fang D, Niu J, Wang W, editors. Advances in Wireless Sensor Networks: The 8th China Conference, CWSN 2014, Xi’an, China, October 31--November 2, 2014 Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015. p. 52–8. (Communications in Computer and Information 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. Why Do We Kiss? [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/why-do-we-kiss/

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. Transportation Security: TSA Could Strengthen Oversight of Allegations of Employee Misconduct. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2013 Jul. Report No.: GAO-13-756T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Simonsen AE. Risk and resilience: Girls’ experiences navigating space and relationships in a secure residential facility [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington University; 2010.

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

Kelly M. Saint Hillary. New York Times. 1993 May 23;622.

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