How to format your references using the Sports Medicine citation style

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

1. Lake JA. Lynn Margulis (1938-2011). Nature. 2011;480:458.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Tao FF, Salmeron M. In situ studies of chemistry and structure of materials in reactive environments. Science. 2011;331:171–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Powner MW, Gerland B, Sutherland JD. Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions. Nature. 2009;459:239–42.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Nie L, Mei D, Xiong H, Peng B, Ren Z, Hernandez XIP, et al. Activation of surface lattice oxygen in single-atom Pt/CeO2 for low-temperature CO oxidation. Science. 2017;358:1419–23.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Walker A. Solar Energy. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

1. Saeed K, Pejaś J, Mosdorf R, editors. Biometrics, Computer Security Systems and Artificial Intelligence Applications. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

1. He Y. Genome-Based Computational Vaccine Discovery by Reverse Vaccinology. In: Flower DR, Perrie Y, editors. Immunomic Discovery of Adjuvants and Candidate Subunit Vaccines. New York, NY: Springer; 2013. p. 91–104.

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 Sports Medicine.

Blog post

1. Hale T. The Violent World Of Mongoose Gang Wars [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/the-violent-world-of-mongoose-gang-wars/

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. Travel System Requirements. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1999 Jul. Report No.: JFMIP-SR-99-9.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Jones E. Leadership Practices in K-12 Public Schools for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students: A Qualitative Study [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington University; 2019.

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. Murphy MJO. 20 Years Ago: ‘Pride and Prejudice’ Was Reborn on TV. New York Times. 2016 Jan 8;C29.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Sports Medicine
Abbreviation	Sports Med.
ISSN (print)	0112-1642
ISSN (online)	1179-2035
Scope	Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation