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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
1.
Coughlin SR. Thrombin signalling and protease-activated receptors. Nature. 2000 Sep 14;407(6801):258–64.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Lukin MD, Imamoğlu A. Controlling photons using electromagnetically induced transparency. Nature. 2001 Sep 20;413(6853):273–6.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Hewitt SC, Deroo BJ, Korach KS. Signal transduction. A new mediator for an old hormone? Science. 2005 Mar 11;307(5715):1572–3.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
1.
Terrón-González L, Medina C, Limón-Mortés MC, Santero E. Heterologous viral expression systems in fosmid vectors increase the functional analysis potential of metagenomic libraries. Sci Rep. 2013 Jan 22;3:1107.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Stamp M. Information Security. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.
An edited book
1.
Aigner KR, Stephens FO, editors. Induction Chemotherapy: Systemic and Locoregional. 2nd ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. VII, 506 p. 131 illus., 86 illus. in color.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Ahonen P, Alahuhta P, Daskala B, Delaitre S, Hert PD, Lindner R, et al. Safeguards. In: Alahuhta P, Daskala B, Delaitre S, Hert PD, Lindner R, Maghiros I, et al., editors. Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2010. p. 179–251. (The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology).

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
1.
Carpineti A. Rosetta’s Comet Colors Reveal Interesting Surface Composition. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015.

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
1.
Government Accountability Office. Federal Communications Commission: Competitive Bidding Procedures. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1998 Jan. Report No.: OGC-98-26.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Reddy GS. Modulo Multipliers with Adaptive Delay for a High Dynamic Range Residue Number System Using Booth Encoding [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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
1.
Feeney K. Hidden Treasures Of the Food Industry. New York Times. 2007 Dec 9;14NJ13.

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 titlePublic Health
AbbreviationPublic Health
ISSN (print)0033-3506
ISSN (online)1476-5616
ScopeGeneral Medicine
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

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