How to format your references using the South African Family Practice citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for South African Family Practice (SAFPJ). 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

Christeson G. Journal club. A geophysicist ponders the mysteries of intraplate earthquakes. Nature 2009;459(7248):755.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dalton R, Abbott A. Hawaii reaches for the stars with astronomy master plan. Nature 2000;405(6789):872.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mutanen M, Kaila L, Tabell J. Wide-ranging barcoding aids discovery of one-third increase of species richness in presumably well-investigated moths. Sci Rep 2013;3:2901.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Frank KT, Petrie B, Choi JS, Leggett WC. Trophic cascades in a formerly cod-dominated ecosystem. Science 2005;308(5728):1621–1623.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kario K. Essential Manual of 24 Hour Blood Pressure Management. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2015;

An edited book

Bozanis P, Houstis EN, editors. Advances in Informatics: 10th Panhellenic Conference on Informatics, PCI 2005, Volas, Greece, November 11-13, 2005. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2005;

A chapter in an edited book

Ishaq SL, Wright A-DG. Wild Ruminants. In: Puniya AK, Singh R, Kamra DN, editors. Rumen Microbiology: From Evolution to Revolution. New Delhi: Springer India, 2015; p. 37–45.

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 South African Family Practice.

Blog post

Andrews R. This Single Drug Will Extend The Lives Of Millions Of Pet Dogs. IFLScience. 2016;

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. Export Controls: International Space Station Technology Transfers. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Magda B. Increasing efficacy of emergency departments through systems analysis of enterprise architecture: Mitigating the impact of technological change. 2009;

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 K. From Wall Street to National Mall. New York Times. 2017;B1.

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	South African Family Practice
ISSN (print)	2078-6190
ISSN (online)	2078-6204
Scope